


you to me are the only one

by JustBeforeTheDawn



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Light Dom/sub, Mutual Pining, Stonewall Prep (Riverdale)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:20:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 25,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23585254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustBeforeTheDawn/pseuds/JustBeforeTheDawn
Summary: Betty Cooper wants a new start, at a new school.  Jughead Jones finds a spectre of his past.
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 96
Kudos: 169





	1. what is and what should never be

**Author's Note:**

> here's some angsty stuff that's going to end in smut and fluff, because the show has screwed us all over so we're diving deep into AUs.

“Betty,” Alice coos, trapping her daughter’s cheeks in her hands. “You don’t have to do this, you know? You can stay at home with me! We can do home-schooling, if you don’t want to go back and see-”

  
“It’s fine,” says Betty abruptly. “It was a good idea, Mom, and you’ve set everything up now. It would be a waste of time for me to just go back now.”

  
She can’t bear the idea. As painful as it was – as hard as it was, trying to go back to school, after everything that had happened, the idea of staying at home, with Alice smothering her, without the escape of time at school, was too awful to comprehend.

  
She straightens her new plaid skirt, resenting the neat pleats, and the matching striped socks. Veronica, the last time she saw her, had offered to help her adapt a prep school uniform to make it look ‘dazzling’.

  
She has not seen Veronica in weeks, desperate for a fresh start, away from everyone who knows about what happened over the last year.

  
Alice is not keen to let her go, but Betty grabs her suitcase, and escapes into the towering gothic building.

She is the only junior to join at the start of the new year, and she finds herself pressing her blunt nails into her palms, hating the looks and interest on the faces of the students in the class she is being presented to.

  
“And this is Elizabeth Cooper, who’ll be joining us for junior and senior year,” says the teacher. “She’s new to the prep system, so I want you all to help her adjust.”

  
Betty doesn’t want help adjusting. She wants to be the Betty of last year, who wanted to join the Vixens, who had plans to go to college, to date, to be Veronica’s best friend, to be the valedictorian…

  
Elizabeth, shy and nervous and retiring, will need no help adjusting. She will keep her head down, her grades up, and not allow herself to become anything other than a dull, clever, run-of-the-mill student.

  
“Now, I know you’ll all make Elizabeth welcome, so… why don’t you take a seat at the back, Miss Cooper, between Miss Sweett and Mister Weston-Wallis.”

  
Betty troops forward obediently, pulling the chair out, and wincing as it squeaks. The duo on either side of her (a tall, sneering blonde boy with a flashy watch, and a shorter dark-haired girl with truly odd eyebrows) exchange a look that Betty wants to bristle at.

  
She quashes the impulse.

  
“Now, you’ve all been given the assigned reading lists over the summer-” The class shuffles to find the relevant sheet. Betty pulls her own from her neat folder, smoothing it over. She had read all of the books on it already, of course, so re-reading them over the summer was more of a refresher than a necessity. Of course, she had hardly been able to leave the house, sequestering herself with her books and poetry to protect her.

  
The boy in front of her yanks a crumpled copy of the list from his messenger bag, pulling half-heartedly at the wrinkles. She can see his ticks and notes on the page, scrawled all over the classic literature and Great American Novels.

  
He stretches backwards into her space. Betty wrinkles her nose at the invasion.

  
“Forsythe,” drawls Weston-Wallis. “You’re in Miss Elizabeth’s space.”

  
The boy in question turns and glances at her, resentment smouldering in his eyes. Betty is taken aback by the dislike on his face, eyes widening as his meet hers.

  
“I’m sure Betty can cope,” he spits, and turns back round, hunching as far forwards as possible – to get away from her? Betty thinks so.

  
“Guess you’ve pissed Forsythe off, new girl,” says the girl, Sweett. Betty straightens her shoulder, resisting the urge to mimic Forsythe’s vertebrae-grinding hunch. 

  
So much for the quiet beginning she wanted.

Jughead is absolutely furious to see her.

  
He worked so hard to get a place at this school, away from Riverdale and all of its bullshit. He barely even has to see his dad these days, just suffering the embarrassment of his dad blinking in confusion at the semester’s parents evening. He does not need another spectre from his past coming here, reminding him of everything he has managed to leave behind.

  
How dare she come here? How can she be here? He’s supposed to be the underdog, the unlikely kid who got here out of sheer talent, rather than all the rich kids who paid their way in here, and are going to pay their way into the best colleges.

  
Well, screw her, coming here and paying her way into his class. If she tries to talk to him-

  
The total lack of recognition on her face hits him again, and he realises that she has no idea who she is.

  
Fuck her. It can stay that way.

Unfortunately, it can’t.

  
“Elizabeth needs to join an extra-curricular,” says Mr Chipping, sweeping into the newspaper office like the force that he is. “Forsythe, you’re always looking for extra staff and never getting it. Miss Cooper used to run the newspaper back at Riverdale High, I believe.”

  
Betty nods nervously. Naturally, she has grown up to be absurdly beautiful, all long limbs and blonde curls, with huge green eyes. People must fall over themselves to help her, want her around.

  
Jughead will be forced to tolerate her, apparently.

  
Mr Chipping leaves, leaving them alone in the room together. Jughead busies himself with papers, pretending to be busy. Maybe if he’s just rude enough to her, she will leave of her own accord. If she’s remotely similar to how she used to be, she will not want him to get in trouble, and will pretend she didn’t have time for it.

  
“I… I have some samples of my writing, if you want them,” she says carefully. Jughead snorts.

  
“Sure,” he says. “You’re here either way, though, so I don’t really care.”

  
“Oh,” says Betty. “I’m Elizabeth, by the way.”

  
Yeah, thought Jughead. Of course you are. 

  
He continues to ignore her, just moving round her as he does his normal work for the newspaper, and then settles in front of his laptop.

  
“What kind of stuff do you write?” asks Betty.

  
“Don’t worry,” says Jughead nastily. “You’re going to be invaluable to me, to cover all the sports and stories about the most interesting teachers at the school. Maybe you can impress me with an expose on what it’s like to pay your way into a privileged education. I bet it’ll be really riveting.”

  
Betty stares at him for a moment, before going pink, picking her bag up, and leaving the classroom.

  
His sense of victory is hollow.

  
That night, he dreams of her, and wakes up panting.


	2. girl, the answer lies with you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty and Jughead completely fail to connect over what they have in common

Betty has no idea what she’s done to make Forsythe dislike her so much. 

  
Donna and Joan, her roommates, have both alluded to the fact that he has a chip on his shoulder a mile wide, because he’s a scholarship student. Betty thinks, as she watches them sneer, that she would probably feel much the same, if she were the only one on a scholarship.

  
As it is, Alice is more than happy to spend some of their money on Betty’s school fees. Alice says that the only good thing that has come from the whole affair is the money.

  
Elizabeth does not talk much to Donna and Joan. The two girls seem to accept this, having little interest in the quiet Elizabeth, and more in their own little secret discussions. If it were the old Betty, she might have found herself trying to work out what it was that they were so absorbed by; but Preppy Elizabeth has no interest in secrets or mysteries.

  
She briefly pictures a different version of this, where Forsythe doesn’t hate her, and they investigate this nonsense together.

  
It is the worst feeling in the world, to have such a crush on someone who so obviously dislikes her. There is no way for Betty to stop, though, after she sees his beautiful face, and hears his outspoken opinions in class. They have most of their classes together, all AP, and he is never afraid to express himself, always snarking a counterpoint to Bret or Donna. He is proud of his working-class origins, his talent, and he tries to call them out on their privileged, capitalist bullshit every time they drawl it into a herd of concurring preppies.

  
If he didn’t seem to hate her so much, he would be the perfect man for Betty. As it is, she still finds herself longing to impress him, to get one of his rare smiles.

  
He never smiles at her. When he even acknowledges her presence, all she gets is ill-temper and hostility. She is constantly humiliated in the newspaper office, taking the dreadful assignments with silent calmness.

  
The open hostility is oddly comforting to her. After weeks at her old school, where everyone stepped around her carefully, whispering behind her back but saying platitudes to her face, Forsythe’s clear dislike is refreshing. She is sorely tempted to confront him, and ask him what the hell his problem is. She’d like to really rip him one. It would be so, so cathartic to just get in an argument with someone who had no ulterior motive.

  
But Preppy Elizabeth would never do that, and Betty finds her own desire to get into a fight with the object of her affections truly troubling. Instead, she takes the dislike with silent grace, and carries on keeping her head down.

Jughead hates her.

  
She is clever, talented, organised and thoughtful. She works assiduously at the crap he puts her through. When called upon to talk in class, her comments are insightful and intelligent. She does not laugh along with all the other rich kids, when they bitch about people worse off than them. Her attractiveness is an almost negligible factor in how much she appeals to him.

  
God, he hates how much he wants her.

  
When they were younger, he never had this problem. He just liked playing with her, because she came up with the best games, and the most fun stories. Archie – the other member of their three musketeers – was never as inventive, never as clever. They balanced each other well, then.

  
Now he gets the sensation that they could balance one another again. When he sees flashes of her old personality, peeking through her quiet façade, he is intrigued against his will. 

  
She is very intriguing.

  
He wonders what it would be like to have her help while he investigates Donna, Joan, Bret and the missing Jonathan. The four of them (the richest, most self-important people in their year, naturally) clearly have something else going on at night, and he is determined to find out what it is. It could be a weird sex cult (god knows prep school has some weird traditions, although maybe he’s just watched Tiger King a few too many times), or just a straightforward Skull and Bones-type affair. He suspects it’s the latter.

  
It’s how he comes to find himself propped in a tree, watching as his roommate and the two girls gather in the woods to … well, to do whatever it is they do out there. He has a camera with a night lens, but he doubts he will be able to photograph anything meaningful. The three of them are gathered around a fire, discussing something nearly as portentously as they discuss literature in Mr Chipping’s ‘salons’.

  
He sits there for a few hours, unable to hear what they’re discussing, but they seem to have agreed something very important. The first time he did this, Jonathan was still in on these meetings; but the boy seems to have disappeared. Donna says he has food-poisoning; Jughead doesn’t know how long a bout of food poisoning normally lasts, but he doubts it’s this long.

  
Could Donna, Joan and Bret have… murdered Jonathan? He knows it’s unlikely, and that his imagination often runs away with him. Still; it’s very odd.

  
He clambers back up to his dorm room window, knowing that Bret can’t exactly catch him climbing back in. He wonders what Betty will make of Donna and Joan coming back to their shared room so late at night.

  
He wonders what Betty looks like in the shower.

  
He wonders why he can’t stop thinking about her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> writing this is immensely therapeutic


	3. the autumn moon lights my way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty and Jughead start to collide

A few weeks in, Betty realises that her attempts to squash School Betty under the heel of Preppy Elizabeth are failing.

  
She can be quiet, she can be retiring, she can take Forsythe’s stupid assignments and do her very best to make them interesting, without complaint. The one thing she cannot do is persuade herself to do is ignore Donna and Joan’s sneaking off in the middle of the night.

  
It doesn’t seem to involve any of the other girls, and they only do it on certain weeknights, always both of them, when they think Betty is sleeping. They leave for several hours, and come back smelling of smoke and cold night air.

  
She had attempted to ignore it, but she cannot sleep on the nights that the other girls disappear. A terrible idea comes to her mind, as she lies in the dark, her brain churning over and over. Perhaps it will be a distraction from think about the events of the previous year.

  
Perhaps, if it is interesting enough, she can write a story about it that will finally impress Forsythe, stop him dismissing her. He might consent to talk to her, to share his acidic wit with her. He rarely makes her the focus of his vitriol, preferring to simply ignore her. His ire is largely for Bret and his cadre.

  
Betty wants to be his ally. She thinks they could enjoy their time together, share their opinions, become each other’s supporter in the struggle against the entitled next-generation one percenters at their school. Betty thinks they could enjoy their time together in other ways, as she resists the temptation to slide her hand down her pyjama bottoms while she has the room for herself. She has not had much desire for that sort of thing, since the end of her time at Riverdale High. Guilt eats at her, her mother’s voice screaming about how that kind of thing only gets girls like her in trouble. She knows Alice is wrong, that sexual desire and exploration are perfectly healthy (Veronica once gave her a pamphlet about how very good masturbation is for health; Betty had hardly been able to stop her friend from buying her an expensive vibrator), but she is struggling to separate her fantasies about what it might be like to sleep with Forsythe from the disaster that befell her sister after Polly started having sex for the first time. Betty blames Alice and her constant badgering.

  
One night, after Donna and Joan have disappeared, Betty is hot and sweaty, and thoughts of what sex might be like (if Forsythe turned that intense focus on her) won’t leave her head. She gives up. She jumps down from her bunk, slides her sneakers on, and jams a torch into her jacket pocket. The window is open from Donna and Joan’s escape, and she clambers out after them, hoping she can catch up to them.

  
A light from the woods is faintly discernible, and she heads towards it. It looks like a bonfire, like the kind of party that Betty looked forward to, back when she had hopes for her late teens at Riverdale High. Only three figures stand by it, though, rather than the crowds of River Vixens and Bulldogs (or maybe Stonewall Stallions) that Betty had imagined. It seems to be Donna, Joan and Bret, the chief asshole from their classes. Betty inches closer, hoping to get a hint of what they are discussing.

  
An arm snakes around her mouth, and yanks her back against a tree.

Jughead is infuriatingly entranced.

  
Betty is just furious, grappling with his arms, until she manages to writhe around in his arms, and sees that it’s him. She goes limp almost instantly, breath warm against his hand, eyes wide. Her hair is down and curly, her bland composure shaken, and her combination of cotton pyjamas, sneakers and a bomber jacket is somehow the most attractive outfit Jughead has ever seen on a girl.

  
“Forsythe!” she hisses. “What are you doing out here?!”

  
“Who’s there?” brays Bret. He must have heard their little tussle, or Betty’s whisper. Jughead rolls his eyes at Betty, and tugs her away, darting off into the night. He left a window open in the newspaper office, just in case he ever needed a way in without Bret noticing.

  
He boosts Betty inside, trying not to look at her ass in the little pyjama shorts. Betty gives him a hand in, hauling him into the room after her.

  
They stand there for a moment, transfixed by one another.

  
“You’ve ruined my investigation,” snaps Jughead eventually, once he realises how long he’s been gazing at her. “I’ve been trying to find out what’s going on with them for weeks!”

  
“Oh, really,” replied Betty coolly. “So what have you found out?”

  
Jughead says nothing. He hasn’t really made much progress, and he refuses to admit that to her. Sadly, she is intelligent enough to work that out for herself, her eyebrows rising in a sarcastic quirk that he thinks he remembers from their childhood.

  
“Do they know you’re investigating them?” she asks. He nods, embarrassed.

  
“I told Bret, in an argument,” he admits. “He didn’t know I was following them out there, though.”

  
“Well,” says Betty. “They don’t know me at all. They don’t know I was following them. I can use that; I can ask them where they go, and I can pretend not to know anything about it. I can tell you what the girls’ excuse is-”

  
“No,” replies Jughead emphatically. “No, no. I don’t need your help, and I don’t want it, okay? You can keep out of this, Betty.”

  
“How do you know that’s my nickname?” demands Betty, her face full of the same fire that she used to defend him with at school. Of course, she still doesn’t remember. Why should she? Evidently he had been so far below her notice that his disappearance hadn’t even registered with her.

  
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” he spits. “Pretty, perfect blonde girl, going to go to a great college and get a great degree and settle down into a perfect life with a perfect house and a perfect life. You’re Norman Mailer’s wet dream, Betty. I don’t want you on my paper, I don’t want your help and I don’t want to know you.”

  
Betty glares at him, her eyes wet with tears.

  
“Screw you, Forsythe,” she blurts. “I don’t know what you think I’ve done that has made you hate me so much, but you don’t know me at all. I’ll find out what those three are up to, and I’ll show you, okay? You self-important, self-absorbed creep!”

  
Jughead watches her go, flouncing off. The fight brightened her eyes and brought colour to her pale face. He imagines that fire, aimed at him, entangled the way they were in the woods, but with even less clothing.

  
Apparently he is infatuated with her. Apparently he has made her hate him, the way he wants to hate her. 

  
He is not happy about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just to clarify? no cheating in this story. ever. it is gross and i can't believe SOME writers think that would be sympathetic as a character trait.


	4. you've been learning, baby i've been yearning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty has decided she isn't taking any more of Forsythe's bullshit. Jughead makes a mistake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's right
> 
> canon means nothing any more

Betty is finding it surprisingly easy to slide into investigative mode. Joan and Donna clearly think that sweet, innocent Elizabeth would never have the initiative or the gumption to suspect them of anything, and they have become lazy around her. 

  
She is always scribbling away at her class notes, true, but they don’t seem to realise that her margins always include shorthand notes, marking down their conversations about the ‘Quill and Skull’, whatever that is, and their excited whispers about the money they plan to make.

  
She can’t wait to shove this in Forsythe’s face at their next newspaper meeting.

  
It is the most alive she has felt in months, her mouth dry with the anticipation of bickering with him, of meeting someone on the same level as her (and taking him down a peg or two). It makes her feel nostalgic for someone she can’t quite place, a friend long-missing.

  
Has she met him before? The more she looks at him, the more she thinks she knows him. He almost seems to know her, sometimes. Even before their fight, he used to roll his eyes with something resembling familiarity on the rare occasions that she spoke her opinion in their literary seminars.

  
Where can she know him from?

  
On Wednesday afternoon, their assigned newspaper afternoon, Betty slams her notebook of transcribed conversations in front of Forsythe triumphantly.

  
“You don’t want my help?” she crows, defiant. “Fine. But you’ll miss out on the bullshit that Donna and Joan say to each other when they think I’m not listening. And it’s a lot, Forsythe, it’s an awful lot.”

  
Forsythe looks at her notebook, his face expressionless.

  
“You want to help, still?” he says quietly. “Even knowing how little I want you here?”

“I know you don’t want me here,” snaps Betty. “I don’t know why, or what I’ve done to you, but I don’t care, okay? This is the best I’ve felt in months, so you can just put up with my _awful_ presence and get over yourself, or you can spend another month of nights in the forest, discovering less than I’ve found out in a _week!”_

  
Forsythe rubs his temples.

  
“Okay,” he says wearily.

  
“Okay?” says Betty, taken aback by his sudden acceptance. “What happened to Norman Mailer’s wet dream? What happened to all that bullshit you told me? Have you suddenly decided to grow a personality?”

  
“I said yes, okay?” replies Forsythe tartly. “I don’t have to explain why to you. Yes, I’ll use your help. Don’t think it changes anything else. I just want to use whatever tools I can to bring these weird preppy kids to light. If that includes you, it includes you.”

  
Betty stares at him for a moment.

  
“You’re the _tool_ here, Forsythe,” she says finally. Forsythe, at long last, favours her with something resembling a smirk, and her heart flutters in her chest.

  
God, she’s fucked up.

Jonathan is dead.

  
No-one from the school has mentioned it, but Jughead has put a few calls in to the local hospitals, and found Jonathan’s family on social media, with worrying ease. Their son is dead, and they have asked for privacy at this time. 

  
Jonathan died of food poisoning.

  
Sure.

  
Jughead is enjoying this all a lot less, now that someone has died. He has been searching through news stories about Stonewall for the last week, and it seems that the disappearance of a student is not new to the school. There have been numerous cases over the decades.

  
Is this what Quill and Skull is? Some training school for baby assassins? Like, Enid Blyton meets School of the Americas? Or do the preppies have to kill someone to prove something? 

  
Is Jughead just paranoid? After leaving Riverdale, he had years of appointments with a therapist. He does not resent it, years later. If his therapist hadn’t been dedicated to helping him, he is sure he would have just sunk into Serpent life, resenting his lot, and daydreaming about using his brain to get himself out of Riverdale.

  
Now, he’s out of Riverdale, and he gets to resent these entitled rich kids instead. But he’s stayed paranoid.

  
His therapist said it was only to be expected, having spent years suffering nothing but bad luck mixed with outright cruelty. He has a persecution complex, he knows it. He works hard to overcome it.

But this might be different.

  
So when Betty comes to him with evidence of Joan and Donna’s conversations, he cannot resist any more. She has done her research, presented it neatly and formally, and she thinks something strange is going on. She does not think he is paranoid.

  
He accidentally insults her yet again, and she snaps back at him, her eyes flashing. He almost grins at her, and thinks about how much he missed her.

  
It is time to let her in, as much as he fears the consequences of being rejected by her – again.

  
“Betty,” he says. “Did you ever meet Jonathan?”

  
“Once,” she replies. “I think.”

  
“He’s dead,” he says frankly. “And I think those three killed him.”

  
Betty puts the notebook down.

  
“How do you know that?” she asks. She does not tell him he’s imagining things. Jughead pulls his laptop over, and shows her his evidence. She reads it all, nodding seriously. Her glorious green eyes, fringed with long lashes, pore over the scans of old newspapers and Facebook pages.

  
“How long do you think this has been going on?” she asks. Jughead shrugs.

  
“Certainly longer than we’ve been alive, Betts, maybe even our grandparents. The school was only built around the same time as Riverdale’s founding, so-”

  
“Are you from Riverdale?” demands Betty. 

  
Jughead knows he has fucked up. 

  
“I-”

Forsythe fiddles with his hair anxiously, and the familiar gesture trips some wire in Betty’s mind. His eyes are the same, but he has grown more than a foot, surely, since they last met. The planes of his face are very different without their puppy fat, though he still looks very young. His brow is much darker, showing the weight of their years apart. Perhaps it is the lack of the beanie that threw her the most, but she understands why she felt such a connection to him, the moment that she saw him. 

Her friend, Jughead, who’d disappeared one day in the first year of middle school, never to be seen again. Her mom had never given her an explanation, although Archie had been full of rage, and refused to tell her what he knew. She missed him terribly, longing for the friend who’d had the same interests as her, instead of Archie’s love of girls and sports.

  
Her other longing for him is something new.

  
“…Juggie?” she says hesitantly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes but why does he hate her now? huh? huh? where did he go?


	5. it's the way you call me another guy's name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty and Jughead clash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its time for a fucking barney lads

After Betty says that – some part of her exults _I found you, I looked for you for so long_! – Jughead’s face shutters, and he steps away from her.

  
“No-one calls me that here,” he says blandly. “You shouldn’t start.”

  
Forsythe, of course. Betty must’ve known that that was Jughead’s legal name once, (never his real name) but she’d forgotten. 

  
_“Jughead,”_ she says, defiantly, loving the way that his name curves inside her mouth. “Where did you go? Where’ve you been? I missed you so much, I-”

  
Jughead’s scowl is ferocious and repulsed. Betty shuts up instantly. Here, then, is the source of his dislike, something stemming not from her as she is now, but from something that Jughead remembers and she doesn’t. 

  
“Don’t give me that shit, _Betty,”_ he spits. “You didn’t give a fuck about me then, and if it wasn’t for your precious grades, you wouldn’t give a fuck about me now.”

  
Betty stares at him in astonishment. The eleven-year-old Jughead that she remembers was angry, sure, and had little tolerance for anyone except her, Archie and his baby sister, but his ire was never focussed on her. This feels horrible, her previous desire for a fight waning in the face of his bitterness.

  
“You remember me now? Great,” he snaps again. “How long did it take you to forget someone you used to share every lunch with? Every weekend? I used to defend you when Cheryl or Ginger said there was no substance to you, but they sure had a point, didn’t they? You seemed pretty happy to see me go!”

  
Betty, to her eternal shame, starts to feel her eyes fill with hot, frustrated tears.

  
“That’s not fair!” she says. “I didn’t know-”

  
“Forget it,” says Jughead bitterly. “Why should the thought of me affect your perfect fucking life and your perfect family? A dirty mark on the stain of your precious school career, huh?”

  
He stands up, shoving Betty’s notebook back across the table at her. Betty is stricken, unable to process how horribly his words have hurt her. He doesn’t know – he can’t possibly know – what happened last year, but his words, his assumptions about her and her life, they make her ache, a horrific nausea spreading through her stomach into her lungs and dragging on her breath.

  
“Keep your little notes, Betty Cooper,” he snarls. “I was wrong. I don’t want your help. I don’t want anything to do with you.”

  
He storms out of his own domain, leaving Betty behind.

  
Betty gulps and pants, the horrible tears running down her face like acid. He doesn’t – he doesn’t know how cruel he’s being to her, and she can’t understand what happened to her sweet friend in their missing five years. She wanted him back so very badly when he disappeared, and for a moment she’d been elated.

  
Imagine having Jughead back! He’d been her closest ally at school, helping her with Archie and schoolwork and the bullies that always seemed to hover around them. He’d been kind and understanding and good to her, even as his own home life seemed to get worse and worse, and he wasn’t allowed to come to her house any more.

  
For a moment, she’d entertained the fantasy that she could have him back, a friend who remembered her, who remembered what she was like before sophomore year and all of its disasters. Someone who could look at her without seeing her family, and the mess that her life had turned into. She sees bits of the boy that she remembered; his inquisitiveness, his search for the truth and justice. But something has happened in the intervening years – she’d done something to make him hate her, and now he is using her very worst thoughts against her.

  
Betty puts her head in her hands, and cries.

Fucking Betty.

  
Jughead shoves his hands further into his pockets, kicks his door open, and swears at Bret’s objections.

  
 _Fucking Betty_!

  
How many times in the years since he left Riverdale has he thought about finding Betty, or even Archie, and trying to explain what really happened? Confront his old friends, and ask them why they abandoned him the way that they did?

  
And now that he finally, finally has the chance, it is a mess beyond his comprehension. Betty has grown up to be beautiful, and apparently some leftover fondness for her has him wanting her, the way he’s never wanted anyone else; but it’s all tied up in his resentment and heartbreak, his hatred of her for letting him slip through the cracks of her life like a piece of dirt. And yet he wants her, he wants her help, he wants her to investigate with him, he wants to sleep with her and watch her lovely face while she sleeps and know that she feels safe and happy. 

  
He wants her to hurt the way he does.

  
It’s a fucking mess.

  
“You have an argument with Ponytail?” drawls Bret. “You know, the rest of the guys here wish they were as lucky as you, getting to spend one on one time with a repressed little virgin like that. Donna and Joan are thinking of starting a pool on who can fuck her first.”

  
Jughead stares at Bret. Disgust pools in his mouth, bitter and angry. No matter how angry he is with Betty, there is no way an attitude like that can be anything other than repulsive and sexist and coercive. No-one deserves that kind of behaviour.

  
“You’re fucking disgusting, Bret,” he manages to growl, finally. “You’re all fucking disgusting. People aren’t meant to- that shouldn’t be how sex works, virginity isn’t a fucking commodity! It isn’t even a real thing!”

  
“You’ve protected yours hard enough, you want to swap with her?” teases Bret, the ugly patrician mouth curving in a cruel smile. Jughead thinks he might jump off his bunk and punch him.

  
“Didn’t realise you were such a romantic, Forsythe,” the bastard continues. “Everything’s a commodity. What, is she your new muse? You put her up on a pedestal in that office, while you run your little investigation?”

  
Jughead is the very last person to put Betty on a pedestal, but he cannot listen to Bret any longer, and turns to the wall, jamming earphones over his ears.

  
In his dreams that night, Betty kisses him sweetly, and he knows that their past does not matter, that she loves him and he loves her. Their bodies are entangled, the pleasure is almost unbearable, and he wakes with a panic, desperately grateful that Bret was too gone in sleep to hear Jughead whimpering Betty’s name.

 _Fucking_ Betty, he thinks bitterly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I miss bret and donna and stonewall. it was the best thing riverdale's done in three series and it right fucks me off that 4x17 departed so abruptly from... literally everything about the show. guess the series really did end on 4x16; i'm not gonna watch past it lol


	6. tears of loves lost in the days gone by

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's time for a few, much needed revelations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alice tries to avoid questions, jughead tries to brood, and betty's having none of it

Donna and Joan have definitely noticed.

  
They stare at her now, eyes lingering where before they ignored her. Betty is embarrassed; it dates from a few days ago, when Donna asked her if she was feeling sick. Betty knows she looked sick, her face red and puffy from hours of crying. Her head ached from the dehydration of hours of weeping, wracking her brain to remember what it was she could have done to make her friend hate her the way he does.

  
It is different from the last year at school, where the whispers were behind her back, and while plenty of people hated her there, it was not as pointed and personal as the needle-sharp vitriol Jughead directed at her. Her thoughts are consumed by how she could make it up to him, whatever it was. She wishes she could hate him, but it seems like that’s impossible for her.

  
“You know,” says Donna slyly, “Forsythe doesn’t deserve your tears. There are plenty of better people here for you to get to get close to.”

  
Betty ignores her. Sympathetic girl talk only works when one of you isn’t a suspected murderer with a hidden agenda.

  
Betty should know.

  
She wonders who she can ask about it. Archie might remember what happened back in middle school, but she hasn’t talked to him in months, and it feels too mercenary to contact him now, just because she has a question to ask him. There is no-one else.

  
Well, that isn’t entirely true.

  
“ _Betty_ ,” says Alice, her voice brittle with surprise and displeasure to hear from her daughter. “ _What are you calling fo_ r?”

  
Of course she resents it. She has checked in with Betty once a week, since dropping her off at Stonewall, and her weekends are spent quizzing Betty about Stonewall, smothering her with attention. Betty has never called her during the week before. Alice can barely cope with changes to her routine.

  
“Mom,” says Betty, taking a calming breath. “Do you remember Jughead Jones? I went to school with him, elementary school, but he left Riverdale Middle School in the middle of the year.”

  
There is a pause.

  
“ _Yes, I remember_ ,” says Alice. Her tone drips with unexpected venom. “ _Why do you ask_?”

  
Some self-preservation instinct tells Betty not to inform Alice that Jughead has reappeared in her life.

  
“Oh, no real reason,” Betty replies, floundering. “I just… after moving schools and everything, it got me wondering about people who left Riverdale before, you know? And I never found out why he left.”

  
“ _Betty_.” Alice’s tone is sharp, slightly panicky. “ _You’d be better off not wondering about that delinquent. It was a good thing he was removed from your life when he was, baby, people like that are bad for people like us_.”

  
“Oh,” says Betty placidly. “Okay, mom.”

  
“ _Was there anything else_?”

  
“No, I don’t think so. Bye, mom. See you at the weekend?”

  
“ _Goodbye, Elizabeth_.”

  
Betty puts her phone down. A sense of dread comes over her, and she wonders just what Alice knows about Jughead’s abrupt departure from fifth grade.

  
That night, in the showers, she thinks of him again, and the temptation to touch herself is too much; but then she remembers how much he hates her, and instead of blissful release, she is left frustrated and aching.

Jughead does not know what to do.

  
He sits in his dorm room, and panics, hands clasped in front of him, in case he has the urge to punch Bret. Apparently, the unspoken something between him and Betty has been obvious to everyone around them, and Bret, Donna and Joan want to exploit it, want to scare him off by threatening his girl.

  
How little they know her.

She isn't his girl, even if he sometimes dreams that she is.

  
Despite how much Jughead resents her, despite how convincingly she has spent her days here pretending to be a doormat, he is under no illusions about her intelligence. She is too clever to be taken in by whatever it is that the Quill and Skull have planned for her. He shudders at the tone that Bret had taken, and the idea that they were going to coerce Betty into something she didn’t want to do. 

  
Surely Betty doesn’t need him to protect her. She isn’t some damsel in distress, and he isn’t a knight in shining armour, riding in to rescue her.

  
But he should warn her that they have something planned for her, and it might be his fault.

  
He is about to swallow his pride, and go looking for her, when his door flies open, and the object of his emotions storms in, refreshingly furious, instead of sad and broken.

  
He opens his mouth to speak to her, but she pre-empts him.

  
“You’re going to listen to me, Jughead Jones, and then you’re going to give me some answers!” she hisses. Jughead thinks he might be slightly turned on, and his mouth gapes unattractively.

  
“Look,” says Betty, facing him squarely, hands on her hips. “We were friends. I loved you and I missed you, okay? I don’t know what happened. I don’t remember why you left, if I ever knew, but I’m sorry that you think I did something to make you hate me, okay? I don’t know what it was, but we were eleven, and I think I deserve an explanation, not this stupid flip-flopping and refusing to talk to me every other week! I was a child! I don’t remember, okay? If I can, I’ll apologise, and if that doesn’t mean anything to you…”

  
Betty looks sad. She is a terminal people-pleaser, Jughead knows, and the idea of being unable to make it up to him must really piss her off.

  
Jughead has hung on to his sadness and disappointment for so long, it’s like an old friend. He is afraid that he will forgive her. He is afraid he might be in love with her, that this will supersede his entirely legitimate righteous anger.

  
Just as he tries to formulate his sentence, the door opens again, and Bret walks in, pausing in delight as he sees their body language.

  
“Sorry, Forsythe,” he says, smirking. “You know, when we’re… _occupied…_ at Stonewall, we usually hang a tie on the door? Did you know that, Elizabeth? I’m sure Donna wouldn’t mind showing you one of these days, or a few of the other students.”

  
Jughead feels himself go bright red with rage and frustration. Betty, to her credit, smiles sweetly at Bret, and curls a hand around Jughead’s, digging her nails into his skin.

  
“I’m sure we can find somewhere more private for our conversation, actually, Bret,” she says brightly. “Coming, _Forsythe?”_

  
Jughead is dragged after her, still wordless. Betty hauls him to the newspaper office, and slams the door shut behind them. She turns to face him, cowering on the other side of the room, with her arms folded.

  
“Well?” she says expectantly.

  
Jughead does not know where to begin. He has held this private pain for so long, only mentioning it to his therapist. He has not had a friend to confide in for even longer.

  
“You ruined my life, Betty,” he says eventually. “Did you ever think about what it would do to me, when you told them I set that fire? Did you ever think, even for a moment, about how much it would hurt me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what did she do? what did betty do, and why doesn't she remember it?


	7. how years ago, in days of old, when magic filled the air

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty discovers the truth, and decides it's finally time to do something for herself

Betty’s heart is in her mouth.

  
“What fire, Jug?” she manages, finally. Jughead looks exhausted. He looks as if he is about to cry. _Good_ , thinks Betty savagely. _It’s his turn_.

  
Her thoughts do her no credit, she knows.

  
“Really, Betty?” Jughead takes rubs his hands through all that thick, dark hair. “You don’t even remember that?” He chuckles bitterly. “How characteristic, that the defining event of my life never even registered on your narrative.”

  
“I’m serious, Jug.” More than a few childhood events have slipped her mind; she worries about it sometimes. Surely, though, she should remember a fire.

  
“Fifth grade,” he says, hands almost curling into fists. “The last Saturday before I left Riverdale. The last day I saw you.”

  
Betty has not forgotten that. How could she forget that? As spotty as her memory has been, that is one thing she has always treasured, the last time their three musketeers were all together.

It was her, him, and Archie, the same as it always was. Archie had called them excitedly, and they had disappeared off into Riverdale without their parents, freedom nipping at their heels.

  
“ _Look_ ,” said Archie. “ _I managed to swipe these from my kitchen_!”

  
It was a box of matches, mostly empty. A few of them still rattled around inside. The three of them had lit them, let them burn. Betty remembers being fascinated by the fire, watching it burn down, seeing how long she could hold the match before the fire burnt her fingers. Jughead and Archie hadn’t had quite the same connection she felt to the fire, hadn’t shared her entrancement.

  
She had an earlier curfew than the other two, heading home before it got dark. They had disposed of the matches in a paper bin, near their school, thinking nothing of it.

  
She hadn’t thought much of the matches afterwards.

  
“The matches,” she says. “But we were careful. There wasn’t a fire.”

  
“There was,” says Jughead bitterly. “There was paper in that bin. Paper catches fire quickly, you know? You and Archie left, and I saw the fire, I saw the smoke, so I called the fire brigade.”

  
Oh.

  
“But-”

  
“But nothing!” says Jughead, fuming. “You think I wouldn’t remember someone telling the police that I set the fire on purpose, Betty? You think that a kid from the Southside gets away with a bit of harmless playing with fire? ‘Boys will be boys’ is only for nice little middle class kids, Elizabeth _Cooper!_ I was an arsonist, right there and then, and forever! They sent me to fucking juvie, Betty, and then they sent me away to get help with my mom in Toledo! And she didn’t want me before, and she wanted a son who was a _criminal_ even less! You ruined my life, Betty, and I never even told them you and Archie were there too, I never let them know, and it wasn’t even important enough for you to remember that you did it to me!”

  
He is crying now, in earnest, and Betty wants to run to him and comfort him, but she is frozen.

  
 _I couldn’t have forgotten that_ , she tells herself. _I couldn’t have done that to him_.

  
No-one had ever mentioned a fire to her. Nothing had changed around that time, apart from Jughead disappearing, and Alice-

  
Alice. Fuck, Alice had started getting worse right around then, snapping even harder at her husband and kids, and watching Betty like a hawk.

  
“Juggie,” she gasps, reaching for him. Jughead rears back, out of her reach, and she thinks she feels her heart tear in two.

  
“Jughead,” she pleads again. “I didn’t know, I didn’t! I swear, I don’t know anything about it, I remember the matches, but the fire… I don’t understand, I promise I never said anything about a fire, I never even told anyone we had the matches!”

  
Jughead scowls at her.

  
“I remember what a good liar you are,” he spits. “If you don’t have the courage to tell the truth, I don’t owe you any more explanations. You fucking tell yourself whatever you want to hear, Betty, but leave me out of it.”

  
Betty doesn’t move.

  
“May I leave now?” says Jughead, through gritted teeth. He is so very angry with her, he is shaking. If Betty wanted this encounter to solve some of their problems, she got the opposite – all she has is more confusion, and an even angrier Jughead. He might resent her even more now, now she can’t understand his story.

  
She steps aside, and lets him pass. Jughead slams the door behind him, again.

The next day is a weekend, and Betty is home. Alice greets her with her usual fervent enthusiasm, wrapping Betty in a clinging hug, and showing her where – yet again – Alice had tidied her room for her, out of love, or so she says. Betty thinks it is another way of controlling, of demonstrating to Betty that Alice can invade her daughter’s most private space.

  
This time, Betty is not willing to take it.

  
“Mom,” she says sternly. “Where are my diaries?”

  
“Oh, honey-”

  
“Where,” says Betty, her jaw jutting forwards in defiance, “Is my journal from fifth grade? I want to read all about the day that I apparently told the police that Jughead Jones tried to burn down Riverdale Middle School, Mom. I’d _really_ like to read it.”

  
Alice goes pale, and then pink.

  
“I thought I told you to forget about that boy,” she snaps.

  
“Well, apparently I _did_ forget about a few things, Mom,” says Betty spitefully. “Like, for instance, seeing the police, or there being a fire at all.”

  
The catharsis of defying her mother is addictive.

  
Alice is silent for a moment, before Betty makes a slight movement. The floodgates open.

  
“It was for your own good!” Alice wails. “When Sherriff Keller came over – he knew all about it from Jughead, said he knew you and those two boys were inseparable, he had to ask if you were there that day, could confirm that it was just an accident!”

  
“What did you tell him?” asks Betty, her voice wobbling dangerously.

  
“I told him the truth,” says Alice bitterly. “That the Jones boy was a bad influence, just like his father. I told him Jug-Head set the fire deliberately, knowing him. I told him the boy should get help, that I didn’t want him around you. I convinced him that a stint in juvenile detention and removal from Riverdale was just what that little bastard needed to stop him falling into the same trap as FP. Keller believed me, of course, he knows I wouldn’t lie-”

  
“But you did,” says Betty. She will not cry in front of Alice. “You told him I said Jughead set the fire. You told Keller I told you all about it, didn’t you, Mom? And that’s why Archie was funny with me for that year, and why Jughead got sent away, isn’t it?”

  
Alice shakes her head, but Betty can see in her mother’s face that she is right.

  
“You _are_ a liar, Mom,” whispers Betty. “You ruined a little boy’s life to support your own fucking narrative, Mom, you’re a piece of work, I can’t believe- You’re nearly as bad as Dad, Mom, I don’t want to talk to you ever again!”

  
“Betty!” gasps Alice. “I didn’t bring you up to use language like that, I-”

  
“I wish you hadn’t brought me up at all, Mom!” says Betty, and now she wishes she were crying. “I honestly, honestly wish that you’d never met Dad, that you’d never had kids if this is what you were going to do to them! You’ve tainted everything I’ve ever loved!”

  
Alice presses her hands against her heart, like the mother in a Victorian novel.

  
“Elizabeth, I-”

  
“I’ve heard enough from you,” snaps Betty. “I’m going back to Stonewall for the weekend, and I don’t want to see you again, okay? I want you to stay here and think of the way you’ve poisoned every good thing you’ve ever touched, Mom!”

  
She grabs her bag, and storms out of the house.

At Stonewall, the light is still burning in Jughead’s room. Of course, he doesn’t go home for the weekend; his mother lives in Toledo, and Betty knows from Fred that he does not see his father, who descended long ago into alcoholism and misery in Sunnyside. She wonders if that is her mother’s fault as well.

  
The best vengeance she could possibly have is to be happy – to make Jughead happy, too. She thinks she knows a way. She doesn't want either of them to cry over the other anymore.

  
She knocks on the door, and barges in. Jughead is inside, staring aimlessly at a blank page on his laptop.

  
“What do you want now, Betty?” he says miserably. “Haven’t you already done enough?”

  
She takes a deep breath, and straddles his lap. Jughead stares at her in confusion, eyes flickering down to her lips, and up again.

Betty leans forward, and carefully presses her lips to his. 

  
Jughead does not respond for a moment. She is afraid he will push her away; but slowly, his hands move, and he reaches up into her hair, crushing her against him desperately. When Betty opens her eyes, she sees Jughead’s beautiful face, contorted with horror and self-loathing and longing - _desperate_ longing. His eyes are dark, pupils completely dilated. She wants to believe it is for her, that she hasn't made a mistake.

  
“Jughead,” she whispers, against his lips. Jughead shudders against her, and clutches her closer. “Juggie, baby, I need to tell you something.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh FUCK YEAH
> 
> fucking alice
> 
> don't pretend she wouldn't do this
> 
> guess what motherfuckers honesty is fucking attractive


	8. mine's a tale that can't be told

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A moment of honesty, on a cloudy Saturday at Stonewall

The diary lies open on Jughead’s lap. The cover is baby pink, of course, and eleven-year-old Betty’s handwriting is in the same hot pink gel pen that Jughead remembers from their childhood. He resists the urge to sniff the pages, see if the chemical strawberry smell from her scented pens has survived the years.

Betty sits cross legged on his bunk facing him, chewing nervously at her lower lip.

They have not kissed again. Jughead’s emotions are still too much of a mess for him to even start untangling what that kiss meant, although hope is rattling around inside his brain. Instead, Betty has opened her diary and her heart to him, and he owes it to her to listen to what she is offering.

 _Juggie is STILL not back,_ Betty has written _. I miss him. Maybe he’s gone to visit his mom and Jellybean? But he would have been super-excited about that. He DEFINITELY would have told Archie about it, even if he didn’t tell me._

_Archie has been in a bad mood with me recently. I don’t want to hang out with him very much at the moment, ACTUALLY._

_I wonder when Jughead will come back. I want things to feel normal again. Mom has been worse than EVER; Polly and ~~me~~ I can’t leave the house without her knowing exactly where we’re going, and for how long._

_I want to tell someone about how ANNOYING Mom is; Jughead would get it, but he isn’t around. Maybe when he gets back, we can go to Pop’s. Mom hasn’t banned that yet!_

There is an entry about the day they played with the matches. There are entries throughout the diary about how confused and upset Betty was by Jughead's departure. 

There is nothing about a fire, or seeing the police, and fifth-grade Betty was just as meticulous in her recording as junior Betty.

So.

“It was all a lie,” says Jughead finally, after he has read back and forth, after he has satisfied himself that Betty could not possibly have faked this to hide her guilt (he’s meticulous too; it’s part of why they used to get on so well).

“Alice lied,” says Betty. Her lip trembles. “Jughead, I’m so sorry. I know I can’t ever make it up to you, what she did. I just… please, please try not to hate me anymore, for what my mom did.”

Jughead considers this for a moment, tries to be measured in his reaction. For half a decade, he has hung on to his justified resentment. His heartbreak, his paranoia, his inability to trust, much of it has stemmed from the fact that Betty, who was meant to be one of his closest friends, had told the police he set a fire. She had rejected him utterly. Once, he had tried to contact Betty and Archie, and he had got through to Alice.

“ _She doesn’t want to speak to you, Jug-Head_ ,” Alice had told him. “ _Please don’t call here again_.”

It hardened his heart. All he had wanted was an explanation.

Now, years later, he finds his trust was not betrayed; that Betty never let him down like that, that she never threw him to the lions. Alice did, sure, but he had always known that Alice was a piece of shit who didn’t deserve the daughter she’d been gifted with.

His memories of Betty were tarnished, but Bret had informed him once that tarnish on silver could be cleaned, with the right polishing cloth and a trustworthy housekeeper ('hard to find, Forsythe, these people always want to rob you, especially the... _minorities,_ you can never really trust them, can you?').

Maybe this diary can be the 'right polishing cloth' for his fucking brain.

“Betty,” he says. “I wanted to hate you. I wanted to hurt you.”

“I know you did,” she replies, her eyes going dull.

She thinks this is him rejecting her.

He tips her chin up, and caresses her face. Betty softens into his hand, her big green eyes liquid.

His therapist always said that letting go of his resentment might help him. Perhaps he has been offered the perfect opportunity to do.

“Maybe I didn’t fight hard enough for you, back then,” Jughead says. “It took a long time for me to believe that there wasn’t some mistake.”

“And there was.”

“There was.”

Her own hand comes up to cradle his cheek. For a moment they sit there in silence, the diary between them as a bridge.

“I like you so much,” Betty whispers. “You hated me, and I just wanted you to like me. I’ve lost so much already. I couldn’t believe it when I got you back, only to find that Alice had already taken you away from me.”

“I’ve been so horrible to you, Betty, how could you like me?”

“Honest dislike is better than all of those whispers behind my back from last year,” mutters Betty. “And I think I must’ve remembered you, somehow, I must’ve remembered how close we were, even when I didn’t recognise you.”

“I guess five years of puberty is a miraculous thing.”

“Yeah, no beanie, as well, and,” Betty blushes, “I mean, the way you look now… I guess that didn’t hurt.”

This coming from Betty, who’d grown up to look like a goddess of the silver-screen.

“Betty,” says Jughead. He swallows his pride. If he allows this wound to fester further, maybe it will never heal. It will take a while, but he wants to trust her again. “I don’t want to hate you. I don’t think I ever really did. Can you forgive me for the way I’ve been treating you?”

“Juggie.” Betty gives him a brave smile. “I can. I want to.”

Jughead sighs.

“Aren’t we a mess?” he says wearily.

His hand has not left her face, and he wonders how she would react to him pulling her closer for another kiss. Are they a toxic disaster, doomed to failure before they can even make a start in life? Or can they be better than her mother, better than his father? He thinks she would like it if they tried.

In the end, Betty makes the decision for him, and pulls him in for a kiss. This time, he gives in immediately, revelling in the feel of her plush lips against his, the push and pull of their mouths together. He has never kissed anyone before, and he didn’t think it would feel this good, just to stay like this, wrapped up in one another. Betty’s arms are looped around his neck, his around her waist, and it feels so good just to be _held._

No-one has held him like this in years. Neither Gladys nor FP were particularly physically affectionate with their ‘delinquent’ son, and Jellybean was never a cuddly child, no matter how much she loved him and stood by him.

Betty’s grasp is soft and tight and comforting, and he wonders how closely he could hold her before it became uncomfortable. He tightens his grip on her, and a little squeak comes from her as she opens her lips against his.

“Sorry,” he gasps, pulling back. “I’ve never kissed anyone before. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“It wasn’t a complaint,” whispers Betty. “I haven’t kissed anyone either. It – it felt good. It felt like you wanted me.”

“I _do_.” Jughead frowns. “You haven’t kissed anyone? But you’re so – you’re you, I mean, you’re so pretty, Betty, surely the boys at Riverdale High were lining up to date you.”

He hears how dated it sounds, even as the words leave his mouth.

Betty pinkens, and her blissful expression drops.

“Jughead,” she says hesitantly. “In the interests of total honesty… I think I should tell you why I transferred to Stonewall.”

She looks as if she is about to cry again. Jughead holds her closer – _god, today has been such a fucking rollercoaster_ – and prepares to listen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mmmmmmmmmmm communication
> 
> mmmmmmmmmmmm
> 
> that's the overdramatic content i'm here for
> 
> nothing sexier than a stimulating conversation with someone who respects ur opinion
> 
> i mean they're going to have sex too but that's beside the point


	9. my freedom i hold dear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jughead learns a few more things about Betty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: discussion of abortion in this chapter. please skip if this is uncomfortable for you.
> 
> also i made a joke on tumblr about riverdale marketing and burger king, and also a very silly oneshot, and I've definitely made at least ten people i don't know laugh and it's the best I've felt in months, so i'm glad i didn't nope out of the fandom the other week

“Do you remember the Blossoms?” asks Betty. She has stopped and started a few times; Jughead is trying to be sympathetic to her, to remember that something dramatic must have happened to drive her away from Alice’s plans for her.

“I think so,” he says. “Rich kids, right? Twins of Evil?”

“Without the vampires,” Betty grins weakly. “I think. Well, Polly – my sister? – Polly and Jason Blossom started dating in my freshman year. And I mean dating, fighting, breaking up and getting back together, the whole teen drama thing.”

“Sounds fun.”

“It was really tedious, actually. All that back and forth is messy, and after a while it just gets boring.”

Jughead snorts. He remembers Polly, the golden girl who overshadowed Betty in everything. He remembers Jason, too; remembers snide comments, harsh shoves and cruelty. He has little hope that Jason grew up to be a better person.

“Well,” Betty draws in a breath. “Eventually, it came to the most predictable mess of all. Polly, at the start of last year, got pregnant.”

Christ.

“Is she…” Jughead’s voice trails off. “Is she okay? Did she have…”

Betty is shaking her head, her eyes silver.

“No,” she says. “No, she isn’t.”

It feels good to tell someone who wasn’t there about it. Veronica had tried to be sympathetic, god knows, and Alice had tried some ludicrous self-help book to get Betty to open up to her; but every time Betty thought about telling them, she would remember how everyone looked at her, the weeks of suspicion. 

She remembers the whispers that she was just like her father.

Jughead doesn’t know about any of that. His face is open, waiting for her to get the words out, and she thinks they might all come spilling out. It isn’t like pulling off a band-aid, that most tired of clichés; instead, it’s more like picking the scab off a wound and watching it bleed, knowing that one day the flesh will close to be tight pink scar tissue. Betty can’t heal without scars, but maybe this will help her accept the changes that the scars have brought to her body.

“Polly knew what she wanted to do,” she says, “And Jason, despite everything I ever thought about him, was good about it. They knew they weren’t in a position to have a child, at all, and Polly didn’t want to go through carrying a baby for months, only to give it up for adoption. She knew the best thing for her was to get an abortion.”

It feels good to say it. The idea is so taboo; Alice has pretensions to Catholicism, when it serves her purposes, but Betty has had the advantage of time spent with Veronica, with access to books and newspapers. She knows that in Polly’s position, she would have done the same. It was the best thing, for Polly’s future, and the idea of bringing a child into the twenty-first century seems cruel to Betty at the best of times.

Jughead’s face is sympathetic. He is not judging her or Polly. Betty had a feeling he would understand.

“So she had an abortion,” he says. 

“No,” says Betty again. “No, I looked up a clinic for her, and Jason came over in his car to pick her up on a school day. We had a whole plan to cover her absence, and I was going to look after her when she got back, so our parents wouldn’t suspect anything.”

She presses her nails into her palms. Scar tissue sits there too, ridged and solid. On cold days it tugs at her hands, makes it difficult to hold a steering wheel or a book. Before sophomore year, Betty thought she had this particular habit under control.

There were days when she thought her hands would never stop bleeding.

“But we must’ve made a mistake,” she says. “Me and Jason and Polly. They never even got to the clinic, Jug. Jason’s car – you never saw it, it was beautiful, a red ’61 Chevvy Impala – Jason’s car, there was a – a crash.”

“Betty.”

“They died, Jug.” Betty feels tears run down her face again. It feels good to cry in front of someone who doesn’t hate her, who doesn’t think she’s evil, who won’t use her pain against her. “They both died. Polly lived a few hours longer than Jason, but… the steering, something was wrong, Jason drove into the path of oncoming traffic on the way to the clinic.”

“An accident?”

Betty breathes deeply.

“My dad restored cars.” Her voice is steadier than she’d feared. “You remember? All those Sundays he’d spend in the garage with me, working on his projects.”

Jughead stares at her in horror.

“He hated Jason, we never knew why, but he hated him. And he hated that Polly was dating him, so we thought if he ever found out, he’d, you know, he’d think Polly had done the right thing for her future.”

She wipes tears away. She doesn’t notice a streak of blood smearing across her cheek.

“But it turns out he… My grandparents were super-religious, like, I never knew, but they had… the worst ideas about morality and sin and all that messed up stuff. And my dad kept it hidden, because he thought he was so good, that our lives were so perfect, that all we had to do was sit in judgement of our neighbours and we’d be free of sin. But then… Polly wasn’t, she was sleeping with Jason and she was going to get an abortion, and in his eyes, that rotted her from the inside out. So he must’ve decided…”

Something rotted away at her dad from the inside. The secrets had eaten away at him, until he thought he had to cut the sin out of his family.

“Betty.” Jughead swallows nervously. “Are you saying your dad…”

“My dad killed Polly and Jason, Jug.” 

It might be the first time Betty has admitted it to herself.

Jughead feels worse. He had tried to make Betty’s life a misery, over a childhood lie that hadn’t even happened, while she was dealing with all of this. God, why had he been such an asshole? He hadn’t known any better; but he tried to put her through so much when all she had wanted was an escape.

“Betty, I’m so sorry,” he says uselessly. “Is that… is your dad in prison?”

Betty laughs bitterly.

“No, no,” she says. “You think my dad believed in earthly law, after deciding he was judge, jury and executioner? No, Jug, he’s not in prison.”

“He’s… at home?”

“No,” says Betty frustratedly. “A few weeks after Jason’s… accident, Sheriff Keller announced to the town that someone had tampered with the Impala, and that it wasn’t an accident, and the very next day, someone cut the brakes on my dad’s car. He was trying to make a break for it, and he got exactly the same thing that he did to Polly.”

Jughead pales. 

“Who…” he swallows. “Who did that?”

“Someone with motive, and opportunity,” Betty snaps. “Someone who had access to my garage, and who knew how to cut the breakline on his car.”

 _Not_ _you._

Jughead is not sure why he is so absolutely certain, but despite Betty’s implications, despite her poisonous words, he has no doubts that Betty didn’t engineer her father’s death.

He was this certain that she didn’t tell the police that he set the fire, and although it is many years too late, he now knows that his childish faith was not unwarranted.

“So who was it, then?” he asks, leaning forward. Betty blinks.

“You don’t think it was me?” she says sourly. “You don’t think the teenager with a history of mental health problems, bitter over the murder of her sister, could do it?”

“I think she could,” Jughead says with a shrug, “but she wouldn’t.”

Betty sighs. She twines her fingers with his, and warmth spreads through Jughead’s body.

He can’t stop himself, though. They met again because they both love a mystery, and Jughead needs to hear the end of this one.

“So… who killed your father, Betty?”

“The Blossoms,” says Betty frankly. “After months and months of suspicion and accusations and losing all my friends at school. They never charged me, but everyone knew I was the chief suspect. Cheryl was so weird about it, like she understood why I killed my dad, like she was grateful to me for dealing with the person who killed her twin; but she always thought I did it, until she worked out that it was her dad, Clifford Blossom. And then when she told him, he… killed himself.”

Jughead is speechless again.

“And then it still wasn’t over, like it turned out when it came to Clifford’s will reading that he and my dad were _cousins,_ so he left me a load of money, as well as Cheryl, and so we’re cousins too, and there’s this whole family history of all the men feuding, and murders, and then when Jason and Polly fell in love, it all just… boiled over into this horrible, horrible thing, and I couldn’t bear being at school anymore, Jug, I just couldn’t face all those people who still thought I did it and everyone else’s pity, and I… I had a nervous breakdown, and I never went back. I don’t think I ever want to.”

Betty has stopped crying. She looks relieved, fresher somehow. She is still holding his hand.

“Betty, that’s rough,” he says ( _really, Jughead, aren’t you supposed to be articulate_?). “That’s… I can’t even imagine-”

“So don’t imagine,” says Betty sharply, but the sting is taken out of her words by the shy smile she gives him. “Just keep being you. But, like, today you, not ‘let’s torment Betty’ you.”

Jughead takes both of Betty’s hands, and turns them over, palms up. She knows he can see the open cuts, the old and new marks where the physical pain has felt better than the mental. She waits for him to say something, to tell her how fucked up she is.

Instead, he folds her hands together, and cradles them inside his own. Slowly, he reaches down, and presses a kiss to her fingers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so it never made any sense to me that Hal, the 'anti-sin' stabby man of our collective boredom, tried to force Polly to get an abortion, in retrospect. i know it made plot sense in series 1, but in retrospect it feels like someone with a skewed perspective on morality would tend harder towards condemnation of women having access to abortions. this was a plot that made more sense to me.
> 
> also the show could not fucking bring itself to say 'abortion'? remember that? and it was treated as something super evil that a MAN tried to enforce on more than one female character. And neither of the women in question even thought of it as an option, as if having an abortion is such a dreadful thing. i mean that's a big old wow from me. there are some dodgy implications there. maybe i'm overanalysing.
> 
> also! sorry for killing everyone, i guess.


	10. and if i say to you, tomorrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After all the tears and confessions, Betty and Jughead have earned some peace.

It is, Betty thinks, one of the best weekends of her life.

On Saturday, after all the emotions and the confessions and the revelations, they don’t do anything much except bask in each other’s presence. They talk about what their lives were like when they were apart; Betty tells him about the joy of finding a friend like Veronica, who acts like a big sister (who had the advantage of not being raised by Alice), whose friendship she hopes she can recover one day. Jughead tells her in turn about his limited group of friends in Toledo, his English teacher who saw hope and fire in his angst-ridden stories and helped him to learn about politics, encouraged the desire for justice that flared in Jughead’s heart. Betty tells him in turn about her ever-transforming desire to be a journalist, to do better than the awful example set by her parents.

He tells her that’s brave. He tells her he feels hypocritical for taking the scholarship, for buying into the trappings of wealth and privilege, but this was his best chance to get out of the trap that his parents (her mother, he doesn’t say) had dropped him into. One day, he says, he’ll write an expose of the free passes you get as a Stonewall student, the privilege and prestige winding their way into your brain. He’ll use the luck of his scholarship to bring all of this down, if he can.

Betty thinks she had a crush on him before, but she might be in love with him now.

On Sunday, they wake up in his bunk, having fallen asleep talking. Jughead looks so young in repose that she wonders how she could ever have mistaken him for arrogant, unfamiliar Forsythe.

It is not completely perfect; Jughead clearly has to remind himself that he’s not angry with her anymore a few times, when a nasty comment almost comes out of his mouth. She finds it hard to blame him, although he invariably looks terribly guilty afterwards, and apologises softly to her. 

The blips get less and less as the weekend wears on, as they glut themselves on the unhealthy takeaways that Alice Cooper would never have allowed, and discuss story ideas.

At length, as the October light fades to a burnt amber on Sunday afternoon, they decamp to the newspaper office. Neither of their rooms will be safe from the topics of their discussion.

“So Bret and Donna have decided to, what, start a school challenge to seduce me? Because we’re investigating them?” Betty snorts. “Oh, Mr Rich Kid, won’t you relieve me of this tiresome virginity?! I’d be ever so grateful! Wow, it really is a different world here, Jug.”

“Or Miss Rich Kid,” says Jughead fairly. “Yeah. Although… uh, I think they want to punish me for it? They aren’t exactly aware that you’re investigating them too, so… um…”

“Oh, so it isn’t even about me? Typical, I’m just a way to hurt a _man,_ not even worth seducing for myself!” 

Betty is taking this with surprisingly good humour. It just fuels her determination to bring the Quill and Skull kids down.

“If it helps,” Jughead says airily, “I was planning on us making sure you wouldn’t get shoved into a refrigerator.”

“Thoughtful,” says Betty. “Anyway, why do they think I want to be seduced? Maybe I’ve already _been_ seduced.”

“Have you?” says Jughead. It is no business of his, but he hates the idea of someone trying to sleep with Betty sometime last year, when she was grieving and isolated and vulnerable. Shit, maybe he has put her on a pedestal.

“Ye-es,” replies Betty grumpily, and plonks herself in his lap. “By the angsty loner scholarship kid who came from the wrong side of town, because I’m apparently a real stereotype.”

Jughead snorts, and squeezes her side.

“You’re a sucker,” he says fondly. “But that aside, what are we going to do about the Quill and Skull, now they’re on the defensive?”

“They still don’t know they’re on the defensive from both of us,” muses Betty. “I’m pretty sure Joan and Donna think I haven’t got a clue what I’m up to, so let’s keep it that way. Would you be willing to… can we pretend that nothing’s changed? That I’m still your mortal enemy, who wouldn’t mention a secret to me to save your life?”

Images flicker through Jughead’s head, of them sitting together at lunch, working on homework in the library, holding hands in the literary seminars. He wants that. He really wants that.

“I want to be with you,” he says bravely. Betty softens, and she kisses him. Her lips are slightly chapped from all the kissing they’ve done over the last two days. Her mouth opens to him, offering a sweet taste of her tongue.

She pulls away slowly, cheeks flushed.

“But,” she says meaningfully.

 _“But,”_ he agrees. “They killed Jonathan. They’re happy to threaten you. If they know we both know, we’ll have less of a chance to take them down.”

Betty nods sadly, and presses her forehead against his.

“But,” she says again. “We can have this. We can have weekends, and the newspaper. We just have to be… patient.”

“We can be patient,” says Jughead, with a confidence he doesn’t feel. Betty kisses him again, this time more chastely.

“So,” she says, pulling away. “I’m going to be your dirty little secret, if we’re being stereotypical.”

“You’re my secret weapon,” Jughead retorts.

“You’re embarrassing,” says Betty. “I’ve had an idea, though. What if I… got more upset about you, kay, and then I used the opportunity to get closer to Donna? Because she was definitely all in on the whole ‘seduce Betty 2k20’ thing when I was crying before.”

“Sorry.”

“Not the point. What if I let her comfort me, and when she’s all, ‘isn’t Forsythe awful, sleep with someone else’, I’ll be all ‘oh hey Donna sure but what’s your secret society’? Except, like, I’ll be subtler than that.”

Jughead stares at her.

“It might work,” he says finally. “It might backfire.”

“It might,” admits Betty, “but I think it’s worth a try. You see if you can get hold of anyone in Jonathan’s family, maybe? We’ve got to work out why they killed him. Why all of these people have been killed. We’ve got to do more than just following them to the woods and trying to hear their conversations.”

“We should get better at that, too,” says Jughead.

They sit in silence for a moment, Betty still in Jughead’s lap.

“I should go,” she says finally. “I need to pretend to arrive back for the weekend, so Donna doesn’t realise I’ve spent the whole time here.”

Jughead nods. Neither of them lets go of the other.

“It’s going to be hard, isn’t it?” Jughead says.

“Well, I’m in your lap,” replies Betty, and flushes. Jughead cannot believe she’s made that joke, and gapes at her.

“I meant it was going to be difficult not to give ourselves away!” he yelps. Betty nods – _she knew that, she couldn’t resist making the joke_.

“Although,” he says, swallowing nervously. “There are always the weekends. For us to… uh…”

“Yes,” says Betty, resting her forehead against this. “There will be a _lot_ of weekends.”

If they can just make sure that they don’t get murdered along the way… Well, thinks Jughead, by comparison to how it was on Friday? Their future looks fucking bright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo in 4x17 did betty yell that she was off to yale without him
> 
> did she not take his place when he was dead
> 
> seems a bit fucking harsh
> 
> one of many ways that the episode was staggeringly badly done
> 
> true betty would never


	11. then what's to stop us, pretty baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty and Jughead carry on with their new plan. Oh, and a few other new things, too.

It is difficult. Betty wakes the next morning in her room to find that Donna is staring at her, a thoughtful expression on her face. Betty tries to re-arrange her own features into some semblance of heartbreak, as if Jughead is still rejecting her. The thought of pining comes easily, although the euphoria of loving and being loved in return is still bubbling within her veins.

The week passes slowly. Betty continues with her quiet, Preppy Elizabeth personality, allowing herself to be stepped on like a doormat. She thinks the Quill and Skull kids are pressing ahead with their plans to piss Jughead off by using her; far more of the students are suddenly taking an interest in her, trying to draw her out of her shell. 

She wonders how she would have reacted if she didn’t know they were manipulating her.

Instead, she ignores them for the most part, only responding to Donna and Joan. Joan is pretending to take Betty under her wing, telling her about life as a diplo-brat, how to get around in politics. Donna is trying to pretend she’s Betty’s new best friend, that she wants to share all her secrets with her.

In their literary seminars, Jughead’s knee presses against hers under the table. On Wednesday, in the newspaper office, they waste a good half hour of their investigating time just kissing, hands wandering.

Betty pulls away when she feels Jughead hard against her hip.

“Sorry, sorry,” pants Jughead. “I guess you were right, you’re just so…”

“We can’t,” says Betty. “I don’t want to have sex for the first time in the office.”

Maybe after the first time, though, she could straddle him in his chair like their first kiss, or he could bend her over the desk…

God, she’s really blushing now. Jughead rubs his hand over her rosy cheek (with a little squeeze to her other cheek, through her skirt), and raises his eyebrows at her meaningfully.

“Murderers, we’re trying to catch murderers,” Betty blurts. They can’t get so turned on that they forget what’s at stake.

“Fuck, yeah,” mutters Jughead.

He got hold of Jonathan’s older sister yesterday. The poor woman was angry and heartbroken, and a lot more willing to talk than her parents.

“She thinks they’ve been paid off,” Jughead says. “She said when she talked to them about an autopsy, they freaked out, and said she was delusional.”

“Shit,” says Betty. “So why did they kill him? Are you any closer there?”

“No, but she said Jonathan had really changed in the last few months, much more secretive, always kinda coy but gloating about his work at school.” Jughead sighs, and rubs his forehead. “I don’t understand why him joining their little secret society would lead to his death, though.”

Soon, the week is over, and the Stonewall kids disperse for the weekend. Betty packs, and pretends to leave, but as soon as Jughead tells her Donna, Joan and Bret are gone, she drives her car straight back into Stonewall’s grounds. Jughead meets her at the doors, cupping her face and drawing her into a long kiss.

“You are a sight for sore eyes,” he sighs into her mouth.

"You see me every day,” protests Betty. 

“Not like this,” he says emphatically.

Her phone is blowing up with calls from Alice, but Betty ignores her mother gleefully. They retreat to Jughead’s room, and she plonks her suitcase on the floor.

“Where do you wash your clothes at weekends?” she asks. “I need to wash all my uniforms and underwear. I haven’t got enough with me for longer than a week.”

“Oh, there’s a laundry room,” says Jughead offhandedly, though he went pink at the mention of her underwear. “You can do all your stuff in there in one go.”

“I could,” replies Betty. “Means I won’t be wearing much for the weekend, though.”

Jughead swallows. His eyes flicker towards his bed, and Betty sees that it is neatly made. She loves that he has tried to impress her.

_Might as well start now_ , she thinks, and unbuttons the top of her blouse.

“Let me do that,” says Jughead suddenly. “I thought about doing this, even when I thought you were… Can I?”

Betty giggles, and puts one foot on the ladder of his bed, hauling herself up until she sits in front of him, knees level with his shoulders. One day, she thinks, this might be a very useful position.

Jughead is up the ladder and kissing her before she can blink, pulling her into his lap, and fiddling with the pearly buttons of her starched, uncomfortable blouse.

“This okay?” he asks, and Betty nods, stretching her neck so he can bite at her hungrily. Her blouse is fully open now, and a nervous hand hovers near her breast.

“Jughead, I want you to,” she breathes. Jughead makes a low whimper, and cups her.

His hand is big and warm, and Betty shudders as his thumb rubs over her nipple. Jughead is hardening beneath her again, and she wraps her legs around him tighter, pressing them closer together. She fumbles at the sides of her blouse, dragging it off, returning to pull at the sides of Jughead’s shirt.

“Yeah,” he says enthusiastically, kissing up her neck again. Betty’s fingers are clumsy on the buttons of his shirt, but somehow they manage, and come back together. His bare skin feels good against hers; she wants more, and pulls away from him again. Jughead reaches for her, before yanking his hands back.

“No,” says Betty, and starts dragging at her skirt, lying on her back to wiggle it down her legs. Jughead helps enthusiastically, flinging the skirt away before he repeats the same with his trousers. 

He lies on top of her, chest to chest, kissing her fervently, hands groping all over her body, fingers edging under her bra, skirting along the line of her underwear.

Betty takes the plunge, and gropes his ass through his boxers. He moans, and thrusts into her, her hips cradling his. Betty gasps, her legs tightening around his hips.

“Betty,” pants Jughead. “Can I- Can I?”

His fingers slide below the waistband of her underwear, resting on her hip.

“Yes, yes,” she says, once her mouth works.

It takes her very little time to come, with his lips wrapped around one of her nipples and his fingers working at her core. She has her hands in his hair, pulling as her spine bows in pleasurable tension.

Jughead groans. She thinks he came too, from the way he collapses against her, gasping her name.

They lie there for a moment, hearts beating in tandem. Jughead strokes her hair, presses a gentle kiss against her lips.

“I’m really going to need to wash my underwear now,” muses Betty. Her panties are wet with her pleasure; one cup of her bra is soaking from where Jughead attacked it. She feels dirty, and adores it.

Jughead stares at her in astonishment, and bursts out laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yuh huh 
> 
> will there be a sex-tape this time?
> 
> anyway apologies for the lack of plot i just wanted to see them happy for a little while


	12. together, we shall go until we die

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty and Jughead make some discoveries, about the Stonies, and a couple about themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heads up: it got more sexual than I was expecting
> 
> hopefully that's fun

The weekend continues much the same way. Neither of them have condoms, and while they take the opportunity to search the Quill and Skull kids’ stuff, they find neither damning evidence of their murders, nor a supply of prophylactics.

“Bret’s let me down for the last time,” swears Jughead humorously, shaking his fist as Betty giggles. “First he commits a murder, now he cockblocks me? I don’t know which crime is worse, Betty.”

“I mean, he hasn’t cockblocked you completely,” says Betty. “There are a few things we can do to pass the time.”

There are. Jughead really likes them. He really, _really_ likes being close to Betty, and seeing her soft and lazy in the aftermath of him touching her. He likes giving pleasure and receiving pleasure in return. They are absurdly compatible, he thinks fondly.

But it isn’t just in their sweet, fumbling outercourse that their compatibility shines. He’s in the middle of giving Betty a serious kiss, thinking of working his way down her body to try going down on her for the first time, that she gasps, and sits up so suddenly that she nearly headbutts him.

“The victims!” she says, eyes bright with investigating fervour.

“Really?” says Jughead, although he doesn’t really mind. “In the middle of…?”

“No,” she says. “I mean, yes, but… Jug, we’ve been trying to work out what the Quill and Skull could get from killing people, but have we tried seeing what all their victims have in common? I mean, we’ve got a list of names, sure, but who were they? What brought them to Stonewall in the first place, did they have things in common? Was Jonathan one of a long line of, what, civil servants’ kids to die, or were there more men than women, or-”

Jughead kisses her.

“You’re brilliant, you know that?” he says, and sits up, swinging his legs off the bunk to hop down. Betty eases herself down after him, and the stretch of her bare body entices him; but her mind is even more wonderful to him than her (lovely) appearance, and he wants to look into this with her before they are distracted again by sex. 

He hands her one of his t-shirts, and they decamp, giggling, to the library.

The warm afterglow of their shared bed has left Betty, and she shivers violently. They’ve been in the library since Betty’s post-sex realisation on Saturday morning, and it’s now late on Saturday evening. After hours of trawling through old newspaper articles, they’ve built up a profile of Stonewall’s murder victims over the years.

It is not a good one.

“They were all scholarship students,” says Jughead. His voice sounds thick with fear. “All kids from poor backgrounds, two of them were orphans, all your standard ‘troubled’ kids who came from unhappy families. Families without power or influence to pressure the police into further inquiries. They just… went missing, Betty. Or it was left unsolved. No-one cared about them.”

She can see him thinking about himself. How he fits the type, with his lost family and his departures from both Riverdale and Toledo. How he doesn’t belong anywhere. How Gladys and FP would be treated by the police if he died, if they even cared.

His face descends into an ugly snarl.

“No,” says Betty. She drops her 80s copy of the Riverdale Register, and rushes over to him. “No, Jughead Jones, don’t you dare.”

“Dare what?” he asks dully. “The one thing I’ve ever been proud of, Betty, the one thing I’ve ever thought I was good at was my writing, and it turns out my scholarship was because I was a convenient victim, not because I was talented. I wasn’t even worth this.”

 _“No,”_ repeats Betty. “Jughead, I’ve read your writing and it’s brilliant. Don’t let them do this to you. You know how good you are. You know you get the best marks in half our classes.”

“It’s a ruse, to make me feel safe before they kill me,” he mutters.

“Idiot,” says Betty fondly. “If we were at Riverdale High, you’d wipe the floor with the students. I know how good you are, and you know it too. I saw those other writing contests you’ve won, submitting stuff under a pseudonym. Don’t let them take this away from you. You’re brilliant and you’re better than them not _just_ because you’re a better writer, but because you’re a good person, too, okay? Because you care about these other victims, even if this investigation just started as a way to piss off Bret. And the best way to piss him off, Juggie, is for you to send them to prison, while you go off and write the New York Times bestseller that you _know_ you will.”

Jughead seems to blink away tears from his long lashes.

“How could I ever have hated you?” he asks quietly. Betty thinks, sadly, _my mother helped to make you this target_ , but she saves her breath for the long, sweet, sad kiss that Jughead gives her.

“So,” says Betty, after they have recollected themselves, and can think a little more rationally again. “If we’re right in thinking that you were meant to be the murder victim, the next in the Stonewall Four, then how come Jonathan died? How come it was one of their own, and they just paid off his family, instead of keeping with the pattern? What changed?”

“Maybe he developed a conscience, and they killed him to keep him quiet,” suggests Jughead. “Maybe he was getting panicky or something. They decided to get rid of a weak link in the chain.”

“Makes sense,” muses Betty. “He wasn’t behaving any differently in our seminars, was he? I can never tell with those four. They spend so much time being brittle and catty that I used to try to ignore them. Still, I was trying to ignore everyone until you, so, that’s not that helpful.”

“Hard to ignore with me trying to push your buttons the way I did.”

“Well, I prefer the way you do it now,” says Betty, smirking. Jughead gasps, and gives her a squeeze.

“You’re so dirty,” he says delightedly. “All wrapped up in that good girl look, and you just… you _deviant._ You’re looking for a good spanking.”

Betty gapes. Jughead goes white.

He snaps his mouth closed, and looks at her with wide, terrified eyes, as Betty crows inwardly at the bit of himself that he’s just revealed. Her body thrums with arousal.

“I don’t think I’d mind that, Juggie,” she says, hoping she sounds seductive, instead of ridiculous. “I wouldn’t mind that at all.”

Sure, she’s the more assertive of the two of them when it comes to physical stuff. Doesn’t mean she doesn’t like the idea. In fact, she really, _really_ likes it.

Jughead flushes.

“We’re meant to be stopping me getting murdered,” he says, flustered.

“And we will,” says Betty. She gestures at the list of previous victims, at the conclusions they’ve drawn. “Look at how much progress we’ve made, and we’re both half-naked. We’re great at multi-tasking, Jug.”

Yeah, they are. They’re going to bring these Stonewall fuckers to the ground, for Jug, and maybe for Jonathan, and for the other poor kids they’ve killed over the years. They’re both going to get out of here alive, and send the Quill and Skull, all of its current and previous members, to jail for what they’ve done. 

Jughead was denied justice for a crime that never happened. Betty’s father and his cousin escaped the humiliation of a court case, of jail time, for the murders they committed. This time, Betty thinks, there will be consequences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh fuck yeah it's justice o'clock motherfuckers


	13. i'm gonna send you back to schoolin'

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things progress; Betty makes friends, old and new

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's slightly more plot in this one, rather than sex
> 
> meh there's a hint
> 
> they're very into each other

Every other day, Mr Chipping holds his literary salon for the top students in his English class. At the moment, this consists of Betty, Jughead, Bret, Donna and Joan. Bret and Jughead usually end up bickering in this class, and on the Monday after Betty and Jughead discover the pattern of murder victims, the bickering is more sour than usual.

“Mr Chipping,” says Bret, sneering, “Forsythe can’t seem to move beyond his attitude to class when we analyse texts, and I can’t help but feel that until he gets off this fake-woke kick, he’ll never be able to detach enough from his own unconscious bias to truly get into the spirit of the text.”

“My unconscious bias?” snaps Jughead. “You constantly refuse to accept that being a white, upper-class man could ever benefit you the way it does. Every book we’ve ever had that discusses class is something you ‘feel you can’t connect to, you piece of-”

Betty can’t help it; her hand flies out to Jughead’s knee, attempting to comfort him. She knows that his feelings of inadequacy and distrust have mounted since the weekend.

She knows, also, that she just made a mistake.

Jughead jerks away from her, sending her a glare.

“You’re no better,” he spits. It’s very convincing. Too much, just for a moment, and Betty thinks that she’s going to cry, from the humiliation and the rejection and the embarrassment of making a mistake that could endanger both of them.

She doesn’t. She sees Donna’s eyes fixed on her, the slight smirk at the sign of weakness that Betty’s showed.

After the seminar, Donna sidles up to her.

“It’s really sad, you know,” she says, a cruel grin on her face. “You really like him, don’t you? And, sweet Elizabeth, he just isn’t going to like you. He’s got much more important things to worry about.”

_Yeah, like you planning to murder him_ , thinks Betty, but she stays silent, and widens her eyes at Donna. 

“I just can’t understand why he doesn’t like me,” she says, innocently. “All I want him to do is like me. I just want to be friends with people.”

“You don’t have a lot of friends, do you?” asks Donna. “That’s a shame. You seem so sweet. We share a dorm, Betty, we should be friends.”

“I’d like that,” says Betty, trying to sound as pathetic as possible. Donna is now taking the bait she’d dropped last week. While Betty fears walking into a trap, she hopes going in with knowledge of their aims will protect her.

“Maybe I can ask Bret to put a good word in with Forsythe for you,” suggests Donna coyly. “They talk a lot, in their dorm; even though they fight, I know Bret wants only what’s right for Forsythe. It’s hard for scholarship kids coming here, because they never really belong. You and I can’t understand that, obviously.”

“No,” says Betty, “I guess we can’t.”

_You snobby bitch_ , she thinks.

“You know,” says Donna, “we were thinking of inviting you both to another little party of ours, one of these days. Something a bit… extra-curricular, if you think your mom would let you stay at school over the weekend.”

“Oh,” replies Betty. “I’d have to ask her, but that sounds fun. Donna, thank you, but I really need to shower. I’ll see you back at the dorm.”

“Of course,” says Donna.

Betty hurries down the corridor. Wednesday is the first day that she can see Jughead face to face, and she desperately needs to tell him that the Quill and Skull seem to be moving their plans along.

An arm reaches out, and yanks her into the janitor’s closet.

“Shh,” whispers Jughead. “It’s me.”

He has one arm around her waist, the other around her mouth. Betty thinks they couldn’t be more of a cliché if they tried, hiding in the broom closet to talk in private. Apparently she’s even more of a cliché than she thought, because now that she knows it’s him, she thinks she’s only a few breaths away from turned on.

“Betty,” he says, and turns her around. There’s very little room in the closet, and his body presses against hers. In the dark, physical sensation is everything, and she can feel where his knees brush her thighs, the tips of his fingers on her waist. His breath is hot on her cheek.

Oh, fuck, she is turned on after all.

“I’m sorry I had to react like that,” he murmurs, fumbling to find her face, and rubbing her chin softly with his thumb. “You know I don’t mean it, Betty. I know now that you aren’t anything like them. I lo- I really like you.”

Betty’s lip wobbles. He must be able to feel it, because he catches her lip with his thumb, and exhales sharply. Betty just lets the tip of her tongue brush it, before catching his hand to move it up, sucking the tip of his thumb.

Oh, what the hell is she doing? She feels so _good._

Jughead starts to pant.

“Betty,” he says. “We need to stop, or I’m going to want… that is, I don’t know what you’re…”

Betty releases his thumb, and inclines her head.

“For your information,” she says softly, “any time you fancy pulling me into a closet to seduce me, I’ll definitely be on board with it.”

Jughead whimpers, his hand still on her face. His other hand is sliding between her waist and her ass, unable to stay in one place.

“I really like you too, Juggie,” says Betty. “I… I didn’t enjoy you saying that, but I hope I’ll know when you’re lying. It worked, actually; Donna’s using it as an excuse to get closer to me.”

Jughead snorts.

“She’s threatening to invite me, or us, to some party,” says Betty. “Whatever it is that they’re doing, it’s moving further along. We’re going to have to be even more vigilant from now on.”

She feels him nod against her.

“How…” her voice trails off. “You’ve never met my friend Veronica, have you?”

“I saw her on Archie’s Facebook,” says Jughead thoughtfully. 

“Well, she comes from this world of the super-rich and powerful,” whispers Betty. “I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind me… bringing her in on some of this. Like, I could get her insider’s view on what the Preppies are like, rumours she’s heard about Stonewall, and, Jug, I’d find it really comforting to know that someone apart from you and me knew what was going on with us.”

Jughead is silent for a moment.

“You trust her?” he says eventually.

“Yes,” says Betty. “I do.”

“Okay,” murmurs Jughead. He drops another kiss against the brow of her head. “Okay.”

That evening, Betty pulls up Veronica’s details on her phone, and stares at them. On the one hand, she meant what she said to Jughead; she thinks Veronica’s insights might be useful, and she wants someone outside the school walls to know what their up against. 

More than that, though, was the fact that Donna’s manipulations have reminded her how much she misses having a close female friend to talk things through. She misses Veronica’s support, girly evenings, chatting about the hypotheticals of sex and life outside Riverdale. Donna’s falseness makes her long for the real thing.

She clicks on the new message box.

_Hi,_ she types. _I’m sorry. I miss you_.

The reply comes a few minutes later.

_Girl, I’ve missed you too_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apparently i find myself yearning for betty and veronica to be friends, rather than whatever the fuck the show thinks it's doing. apparently it might have two more series now?
> 
> honestly get the cast the fuck out of there
> 
> except no, because it is good news for the people on the show that they have jobs to look forwards to if the world ever regains some kind of normality
> 
> but still


	14. your hand in mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty regains a surprising ally. Jughead struggles to focus

Betty texts Veronica all night, and her exhaustion must show the next morning, because Donna is more patronising than ever. Luckily, she takes it as a sign that Betty’s losing sleep over Jughead (well, she is, but not in the way Donna thinks). Veronica tells Betty all about her own life: Archie drama, Cheryl drama, Kevin drama. Betty, in return, can only tell her about her life isolated with Alice, or here at Stonewall. It isn’t much to tell her.

She coyly mentions that she might have a boyfriend. Veronica lights up her phone with excited emojis, ranging from the simple kiss to the eggplant. Betty blushes, and decides she isn’t quite ready to tell her erstwhile friend that the emoji is appropriate.

She asks Veronica what she’s heard about Stonewall. When she first told Veronica she was transferring there, at the start of the summer, she had withdrawn from Veronica before they could really discuss it.

_-There’s nowhere more nihilist and twisted than Stonewall Prep,_ Veronica writes _. Even when I was at my worst at Spence, I’d avoid the Stonies like the plague. I’m not surprised you think they’re up to something bad. It’s usually even worse than what you can imagine. That level of power and influence dehumanises people worse off than you._

_-Do you think,_ asks Betty _, that they could be capable of killing someone, if it got them something?_

Three dots appear, disappear, appear again.

_-Honestly. I wouldn’t put it past them. Are you asking generally or specifically?_

_-Specifically,_ replies Betty.

_-What is going on there_?

Betty sighs.

- _My ~~boy~~ friend and I are scared they’re going to kill him, _she types _. It looks like four of the scholarship kids have disappeared or died. We’re worried that’s what they brought him here for. Is that ridiculous, V? Are we going nuts in here?_

_-I don’t think you’re nuts, B. I’ve heard some crazy stories about Stonewall over the years._

_-OK._

_-B, have you thought of going to the police?_

_-Why would they believe us? They never investigated the murders before._

_-If you get killed,_ types Veronica _, I’ll kill them all myself. My dad has connections_.

Betty’s never been sure if Veronica’s joking when she says that kind of thing.

She thinks Jughead can see how tired she looks, too, when she enters their first class together. It will be a day before she can see him in the newspaper office without good reason, and she wants to reassure him, but all she can manage is a soft, tired smile in his direction.

When they leave the class, his hand brushes again the bare skin of her thigh, and it’s all she can do to stop herself kissing him for his concern.

Wednesday can’t come fast enough, in Jughead’s opinion. He and Betty very carefully don’t text one another, just in case their roommates catch sight of what they’re saying, so their communication is limited to brief glances.

Before all of this, he would never have thought how the small things would affect him. When he sees the bottom of Betty’s skirt brush against her thigh, he aches to stroke her there too. Biting her lips when she concentrates reminds him of the promise of her lips wrapped around his thumb in the broom closet. 

Most of the time, his thoughts are more innocent. He sees her nails in her palms, and thinks of a time when he will be able to hold her hand openly and distract her. When he hears her talk in class, he’s reminded of their long, difficult conversations, that first glorious weekend when they realised what they could be to one another. He wishes that he’d stayed in Riverdale, and her mother had never torn them apart. He hopes they’d have found their way together then, too.

Finally, after another tortuous session in the literary seminar where he had to pretend that he wasn’t in love with Betty, it is Wednesday afternoon, and they have some time to themselves.

Betty opens the door, says a sad goodbye to Joan, and walks in with her shoulders hunched. As soon as the door is closed and the click of Joan’s saddle shoes move away, she prances over to him, ponytail bright with her energy.

“I texted V!” she whispers. “Look at this!”

She brandishes her phone at his face, and he reads the screeds of information that Betty’s heiress friend has provided her with: the Stonewall alumni she’s met, which of her friends had been friends with or dated Stonies (a much shorter list), and her confirmation that even among the rich and privileged, Stonewall was a byword for danger and destruction.

“This is great, Betty,” he says. “So we have someone on the outside who’ll believe us?”

“Oh, if anything happens to us, Veronica will rain fire and brimstone on them, with the help of her dad.”

“Her dad?”

“Yeah, Hiram Lodge, he’s a… well, everyone says he’s a financier but, um, everyone sort of thinks he’s-”

“A crime boss,” says Jughead. “That’s your friend Veronica?”

Betty winces.

“Believe it or not,” she says, “Veronica is trying desperately hard to get out from under his thumb. It’s just hard for her, because she likes being rich and loves her dad, so it’s kind of taking a while.”

Jughead can understand the loving a deeply flawed parent part, if not the rich bit.

“A mafia boss, huh?” he says, and gets to his feet to stand over Betty. She looked up at him, eyes widening, as he put his hands on her hips. “Are we sure that’s who we want avenging us?”

“Jug,” she whispers. “We’d be dead. It won’t matter much to us who avenges us then.”

He chuckles, and tugs her in closer. In the past few days, she’s indicated how much she might like the idea of him being physically _dominant_ with her like this, and he can’t say that he hasn’t been thinking about it.

Okay, maybe he did some research, late at night when Bret wasn’t looking. He likes to be thorough; he thinks Betty will like his thoroughness too.

“Shall we talk about the fact that we haven’t managed to steal a kiss in two days?” he asks.

“We went longer before.”

“Yes, but that was before I spent the weekend with you curled up with me in my bunk, and found out what I was missing,” he says, reasonably. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”

Betty bites that bottom lip again. He thinks she’s teasing him.

“I have,” she says, looking up at him with those big eyes. “I’m going to be really irritated if they manage to murder us before we can have sex.”

“No mafia killing spree will ever make up for that,” says Jughead solemnly. “It would be tragic, for example, if I never got to touch you up in that broom closet like we discussed.”

“Tragic,” agrees Betty, and her eyes flick to the desk. Jughead thinks about when they mentioned sex in here before, and his mind jumps instantly to when she said she’d like to be spanked.

Okay, he’s going to have to stop thinking about this or his erection’s going to become really obvious.

It’s already obvious to Betty, who smirks at him triumphantly, like she knew where his mind went.

He reminds himself, again, that if they don’t concentrate, at least one of them is going to end up dead.

“So,” he says, willing himself to calm down, “What else did Veronica tell you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guys i'm sorry I keep writing them being horny in inappropriate places I guess the pandemic is getting to me
> 
> anyway no joke I was talking to a friend the other day and she mentioned (with no mention of riverdale) her sincere belief that anyone who went to one of the serious posho English public schools (fee-paying) could a hundred percent be a murderer because they're all full of weird secret societies and stuff, and one day half of them will be running the country or famous so they'll make the kids do weird shit to ensure they have blackmail material one day
> 
> so I guess riverdale would be less implausible to her
> 
> not that I disagree with her tbh, those places are WEIRD


	15. oh what fun it all would be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new and unlikely clue appears

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> should I add a mild kink tag to this lol

Donna lets them know that the party is arranged for next weekend, so Betty and Jughead have another week to pre-empt and plan. They become afraid that this will be the Preppies’ big move, that Jughead won’t live through the party.

“It’s weird, to have a date on which I know someone’s gonna try to kill me,” says Jughead, scratching his head. “Like an anti-birthday. A… death day.”

“You’re not going to die,” says Betty. “Don’t be ridiculous. If we haven’t found it before then, then we just… won’t go to the party.”

“As simple as that?”

“As simple as that.”

Jughead smiles fondly at her. 

It’s Friday, a week before the deadline on his life. Betty has received radio silence from Alice since last weekend, followed by a new flurry of calls today.

She listened to one voicemail, and deleted the rest.

They’re together in his room, curled up comfortably on his bed. Betty is playing with his tie, wondering how amenable he’d be to tying her up with it one day, once all of this is over. Right now, they have to concentrate on keeping themselves alive.

Fuck, it’s hard to concentrate when he looks the way he does, all long limbs and olive skin and loving eyes fixed on her. She’s mortally offended that anyone would think of killing him, of taking away all that fire and passion and sweetness.

“So what are we going to do?” he asks, taking her hand and kissing it. He’s been paying attention to her hands since she broke the skin in front of him on that first, strange weekend when they both confronted one another with the truth. She loves him for it, hopes that he won’t try to protect her instead of letting her be part of it all. She doesn’t think he will.

“Well,” she says. “On the one hand, we could refuse to go to the party, like we said. We don’t get ourselves tricked into it, we just… force them to panic, then when they’re panicking, they make mistakes. They make mistakes, they mess up, we catch them.”

“I like that,” says Jughead.

“Or,” says Betty, “we use this week to work out what it is that they’ve got planned for you. We find out what the party is. If it’s catered, we get hold of the caterers. We find out what their parties are normally like. We find out where it’s held, who’s going, who they’ve invited, and we find out what the trap is. Then we spring the trap.”

Jughead sighs.

“Have you ever read Dune, Betty?” he asks.

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, I have, and I’ve even watched the David Lynch movie, which, I mean, if you want to see how a visionary director and an amazing cast can make a terrible movie-”

“Jug.”

“Right! No, sorry, the thing is, in Dune, the hero’s father decides the best way to face a trap is to enter it head on, and assumes that springing the trap will get them out of it.”

“And does it work?”

“No, the dad dies horribly and the son accidentally starts a genocidal cult that spreads across the galaxy. It’s kind of a weird story.”

“Do I have to start a cult?” asks Betty. “Am I the son in this scenario?”

“What? No, Betty, sorry, I kind of got away from myself. No, the thing is, I never think it’s a good idea to walk into the trap. It doesn’t work, unless we know exactly what the trap is.”

“I mean,” she says, teasing, “I’ll start a cult for you if that’s what you really want. They’ll all wear little grey beanies and I’ll claim you’re a guru from space or something.”

Jughead grins at her.

“Please,” he says. “Let’s not walk straight into their trap. We know better than that, Betty. Let’s use this week. Let’s just bring them the fuck down, or… run away, before they can bring us down first.”

“Run away?” she says, brushing her nose against his. “You and me, on the back of a bike, off to explore the country with nothing to tie us down? I’d like that, one day. Maybe we can go, next summer. I have more than enough dirty money that I never wanted.”

“You can be my sugar mama,” suggests Jughead. “I’ll sell my soul to a filthy capitalist pig. But for now, let’s concentrate on staying alive.”

“Think of how it would piss Bret off,” says Betty, and presses her lips to his, sliding her hand down his chest. “Think of seeing his face when we expose the Quill and Skull as a bunch of murdering scumbags. Think of him and the other Stonies, seeing that future they always knew was assured for them disappearing.”

She cups him through his trousers, and starts to undo his belt buckle.

“Betty,” says Jughead, nuzzling her cheek, “are you trying to seduce me with thoughts of sticking it to these rich kids?”

“Is it working?” she asks, rising to her knees and straddling his hips as she works on getting his trousers undone.

“Yeah,” he says, his voice sounding strangled, as she starts to move down his body. “Yeah, Betty, it’s really working.”

He winds his hand into her ponytail, and pulls her down. Betty whimpers, and takes him in her mouth.

Their best clue comes on Saturday, when Betty breaks into Mr Chipping’s office, and opens his filing cabinet with a bobby pin. Jughead watches her and tries not to get over excited.

Inside, she finds a list of names, a book of poetry. The writing is disjointed and shaky, lots of names are underlined and circled. It’s a list of Quill and Skull members, current and present. Bret, Donna and Joan’s names are there, Jonathan’s underlined repeatedly.

The book of poetry has the name Charles Edwards written at the back, again and again.

Charles Edwards was the most recent member of the Stonewall Four to die, the scholarship kid who disappeared eighteen years ago. He was found by the side of the road three states away, dead of an overdose. The case ended there, no-one wondering why the kid from a poor background would die like that.

Mr Chipping, Rupert Chipping, was a student at Stonewall at the time. Now, he teaches the kids in the Quill and Skull, who have committed at least one murder, and are expecting to get away with another.

This is a whole cycle of murder, repeated every couple of decades. Maybe it goes back even earlier, before there was enough newspaper coverage or media to record the deaths. It doesn’t explain why they killed Jonathan, and it doesn’t help them with what the Quill and Skull have planned for Jughead next weekend.

But they have someone new to question, and from the looks of things, Mr Chipping is already in a bad state about all of this.

“I can’t believe he’d leave something so incriminating in his filing cabinet,” says Betty.

“It could be a plant,” warns Jughead. “Maybe they wanted us to find this.”

“So we’ll ask him,” says Betty. “Get him to the newspaper office. Ask him all about this, we’ll record him and tell him we’ll spread it if he doesn’t answer our questions.”

“Betty!”

“Jughead,” she says, pressing her hand against his chest. “I don’t want you to die. If we have to start getting a little devious, then that’s what it takes.”

He takes her hand, and kisses it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah I nearly had him throw himself out the window, but I went with this cheap plot device instead lol


	16. i wouldn't be here, my children, down on this killing floor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Years of damage come to light, as Mr Chipping's conscience finally gets the better of him

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aw get ready for some tedious and obvious commentary on the rich and their tendency towards corruption lol
> 
> also guys i'm running out of led zeppelin lyrics

“Mr. Chipping,” says Betty, walking into his office. Jughead pulls the door closed behind them, and locks it. Mr Chipping looks up, surprised.

“Elizabeth,” he says, “and Forsythe. Is this about the newspaper? I’ve been given to understand that there’s been some tension-”

“I guess Bret or Donna told you that,” says Jughead, sauntering over to lean on Chipping’s death. “They’re awfully interested in me, aren’t they? Do you spend a lot of time discussing your students with their peers? Or is that just, you know, whatever scholarship kid you’ve lured in for Shirley Jackson’s Lottery this cycle?”

Mr Chipping’s hand shakes.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, swallowing. He’s already nervous. Good.

“Okay,” says Betty pleasantly. “Then let’s talk about something you do know about. I want to talk about Charles Edwards.”

Mr Chipping sobs abruptly.

“Oh God!” he gasps. “Oh God, it’s been so long! I just want it to be over. I can’t stand it any more!”

“Good.” Betty watches as Jughead places his phone on the desk, camera facing Honey. It’s streaming to Veronica, just in case they can’t get a video out later due to some Preppie plot. “You can tell us all about it, and we’ll make sure that it ends.”

Mr Chipping drops his head into his hands, his chest jerking as he struggles for breath. Finally, he shudders, and fixes Jughead with a look.

“I never wanted it,” he says miserably. “I want to say that before everything. This place… these people… they eat you up from the inside, rot you like the corruption that made most of their parents wealthy.”

“And you’ve helped with that rot,” says Betty.

“I had no choice.” Chipping’s voice is dull. “I’ve held on to that, all these years, until it was my time to supervise.”

“Supervise murder?” Jughead’s voice is tight with revulsion.

“Yes.”

Mr Chipping sighs.

“When I was a student here, before either of you were born, I was in the Quill and Skull,” he says. “It’s a special group, for students who show a certain… promise. A ruthlessness that society requires, to do the things that no-one else will do, to maintain the balance of power.”

Jughead makes a disgusted noise.

“Judge us all you want, Jughead,” says Chipping. “We grew up knowing we were born to be in charge. We’d go into the upper echelons of government, the media. It was our right; we earned it here.”

“You didn’t earn shit,” says Betty vehemently.

“I know that now,” says Chipping wearily. “I’ve had twenty-odd years to realise that. But at the time, I was caught up in it all. You don’t realise what’s happening, at first. They give you these tasks, to prove that you’re worthy of a place in the Quill and Skull. Those who aren’t dedicated drop out, or fail, and you’re left with only the elite.”

“I thought Stonewall already prided itself on being elite,” snaps Jughead.

“The elite among the elite, then, if you like,” says Chipping. “And as you get higher in the chain, the tasks get… stranger. Worse. But by then, you’re so far in, it’s too late to back down. I’ve done some terrible things that I can never forget, in the name of that society. They’ll never let you forget, just so that they can drag you back in, ruin every part of your reputation if you try to escape.”

Betty idly recalled some stories she’d heard about British prime ministers, and wondered if it was the same the world over, in these strange, privileged environments.

“Tell us about the deaths,” she orders. “You owe it to Charles Edwards.”

Mr Chipping laughs bitterly.

“I’ve thought about Charles Edwards every day since he died,” he says. “Did you know, I just had a baby? And while my son was being born, while my wife brought new life into this world, all I could think about was my complicity in taking a young man’s life away.”

Jughead snorts.

“Maybe you should have thought about that _before,”_ he says.

“True,” says Chipping. “If you take this to the police, I will admit it all. I am truly guilty.”

Betty’s heart thumps at the idea of taking this to the police, of letting it all be over.

“So,” prompts Jughead. “What are you guilty of?”

“I killed Charles Edwards,” says Chipping dully. “It was the final test, to become a member of the Quill and Skull for life. Kill a fellow student. Get away with murder. Know the true meaning of power, the ability to hold a life in your hands and tear it apart, with no consequences.”

“And that’s why I was brought here?” asks Jughead bitterly.

“That, or something like it,” admits Chipping. “It has to be said, your work is superlative. If it weren’t for the Quill and Skull, I would have been proud to have you as a student, to see where your work takes you, Forsythe.”

“It’s Jughead,” says Jughead angrily. Betty takes his hand, hopes that this makes him feel a little better about his sense of worth.

“It’s what the Stonewall Scholarship has always been for,” admits Chipping. “Not too much; not too often; but once every few decades, we give our best and brightest the perfect victim, and task them with taking a life and surviving. It sets them up to face the world and… well, the Quill and Skull will always have that over their heads.”

“You churn out little psychopaths,” says Betty angrily. 

“Yes,” says Chipping dully. “They encourage you to ignore any conscience. I’m a failure.”

“You failed as a decent human the moment you joined them,” snaps Jughead. “Tell us what they have planned.”

“It was meant to be special,” says Chipping. “The headmaster – don’t think he wasn’t one of us – wanted something really big for this brave new world, the first cycle since the president opened up whole new avenues of corruption and dirty handshakes for us to exploit.”

“Fucking Trump,” mutters Betty.

“A treat, to really test our students.” Chipping gestures at their joined hands. “We thought they could try something new. A double murder, if they could work it out for themselves. A beautiful, sad girl, and the boy who hated her for ruining his life. The perfect victim and her perfect murderer. A murder-suicide, even, if the Quill and Skull could see their way to it.”

Betty goes cold.

The school knew all about her and Jughead’s shared past, then, even if Bret and Donna and Joan hadn’t.

They set him up to be her murderer, this bizarrely sweet boy, with his fire for justice and goodness. She was meant to be nothing but a victim, a pawn yet again in a killer’s game, just like her dad and Clifford Blossom.

“So I kill Betty, and then myself?” Jughead’s voice is terribly, terribly grim. She’s never seen him so angry, not even when he was torn up over her apparent betrayal. “We were both brought here for this?”

“Yes,” says Chipping. “It seems we never anticipated your… allegiance.” 

Betty clutches Jughead’s hand closer, scared he’ll pull away.

“You didn’t anticipate a lot about us,” she spits.

“We had no idea Jughead might realise what was going on,” replies Chipping. “Even less so you.”

“Will you be willing to testify to all of this?” asks Jughead.

Chipping snorts.

“I want to be there for my son,” he says. “Even if it’s from prison. I would rather testify and finally accept the consequences of my actions than wait for the Quill and Skull to kill me.”

“What do we do?” asks Jughead quietly.

“We’re going to do the sensible thing,” says Betty. “Get Veronica to send that video to the police.”

Her phone buzzes.

 _It’s off to the FBI the moment you give me the word, B_.

God, she’d missed Veronica. Jughead turns off the video recording.

They ignore Mr Chipping, who’s now a sobbing mess, and Jughead kisses her very gently.

“I’m sorry I was going to kill you,” he whispers. “Apparently.”

Betty smirks.

“Now I’m even more excited to see the look on their faces when we bring them down,” she says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo I cannot believe I wrote a chapter where jughead grabbed betty's ponytail for a blow job and we got a canon ponytail grab kiss like a day later
> 
> all my smutty dreams of them fucking in the newspaper office were implied to be true, his hands were in optimum leg-spreading position during that thigh grab
> 
> lucky kevin reminded them the door was open looooooolllllll
> 
> also i fucking wrote betty being suspected of murder because breaks got cut, i'm a shitty riverdale writer guys!


	17. the time has come to be gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty and Jughead make a decision about the future

“So you believe us,” says Jughead.

The FBI agent opposite him sighs, and takes a sip of coffee. Jughead’s own coffee is long gone; he’d deliberately asked for the most elaborate, sugary confection possible, testing how far he could push the FBI.

It was disgusting. He drank it anyway.

He and Betty were both summoned out of school, apparently on a research trip authorised by Mr Chipping. Mr Chipping was now residing comfortably in a holding cell, spilling everything he knew about the Quill and Skull. The perpetually haggard look was gone from his face, when Jughead saw him, and he looked oddly peaceful. A strange bit of Jughead hopes that his sentence reflects Chipping’s willingness to come clean; but then he remembers Charles Edwards, who died alone, scared and drugged.

He and Betty are giving evidence separately. He misses her, but he knows they can’t do anything to risk the investigation. It is too huge, and too many powerful people will evade justice if they mess this up.

“Yes,” says Agent Smith (Smith? Really?). “Even if we didn’t have Chipping’s confession recorded, there’s been an ongoing investigation into this business for… well, a long time, but, as you might have been able to guess-”

“There’s always been someone higher up who owes too much to the Quill and Skull to allow the investigation to proceed without evidence,” concludes Jughead. Smith nods, and spreads his hands expressively.

“That’s why I’m going to have to ask too much of you, Jughead,” he says. Jughead had liked him as soon as he’d been willing to use his real name, not his legal one. “You and Betty both.”

“You want us to spring the trap,” says Jughead dully. It’s exactly what he hadn’t wanted.

“The evidence has to be incontrovertible,” says Smith gently. “It’s that, or… Jughead, I don’t know how much witness protection can ensure your safety. It may be that you have to go into it anyway.”

Jughead sighs.

“I’m not doing it unless Betty agrees,” he says. “I want to discuss it with her.”

“Okay.”

Betty enters the room, to find Jughead sitting with his head in his hands.

“Hey,” she says softly.

“Hey,” he replies, standing up to take her by the waist. “You okay?”

“I think so,” she says, leaning into him for comfort. She wonders how weird he’d find it if she buried herself in his scent. “Did they ask you? About this Friday?”

“Yeah,” says Jughead.

“I think we should do it,” says Betty abruptly, looking at her feet. He tips her chin up to look at her properly, and she relishes the feel of his soft hands on her jaw. It isn’t fair that they’ve had so little time.

“I don’t want to,” says Jughead. “We don’t know how they were going to fake me murdering you, or me killing myself. I had plans for you that didn’t involve dying.”

He squeezes her hip possessively.

“But if we have to spend our lives separately, always living in fear that one day they’ll catch us…” Betty meets his gaze squarely. “That might ruin some of my plans, too.”

“So we’ll do it?”

“They’ve promised they can ensure our safety.”

Betty thinks of those long lines of Quill and Skull members, all blackmailed into loyalty. If even one of them knows about this operation, it will be for nothing.

“It’s worth a try,” she says.

“It is,” he agrees. He’s more reluctant than her, but she thinks that has to do with her being the first in line to die.

Agent Smith reappears.

“We’ll do it,” says Betty. “Will you be providing us with as much protection as possible?”

“Wires,” says Smith. “Agents on the ground, ready to pull you out at the first sign of trouble. The moment anything goes wrong, we’ll be there. But… there’s a complication.”

“What?” asks Jughead.

Smith sighs. 

“Neither of you are legal adults,” he says. “We’ve had to notify your legal guardians.”

Outside in the corridor, Betty can see her mother’s distinctive frame, sharp and clean in her most expensive trench coat. Beside her, a long-limbed figure looms, all leather jacket and barely contained aggression.

Actually, both of them look aggressive. That body language is not good.

Jughead stiffens beside her.

“I haven’t seen him in years,” he spits. “That man has never been a guardian to me. Neither of my parents have.”

“I don’t want to see her,” says Betty, almost simultaneously. “This is all her fault.”

Smith looks sympathetic.

“We’re already so far beyond normal operating procedure,” he says. “I can’t make any more missteps on this.”

There are bitter exchanges almost instantly.

“Is this Jug-Head?” says Alice, spying their joined hands. “You little bastard, I should have known you’d claw your way back to my daughter one day! Why couldn’t you just leave her alone, instead of bringing her down, making my perfect daughter _dirty-”_

“Don’t you talk about my boy like that, Alice Cooper,” shouts FP, wheeling to face her. He’d been silent when he first saw Jughead, and Jughead realises that it must be like looking in a mirror, now he’s nearly his dad’s height, and his features have sharpened to match FP’s. 

“I’m not your boy,” snaps Jughead. “If you loved me, you would have fought harder to keep me around, instead of throwing me off to Gladys like a piece of garbage.”

“It was for your own good, Jug.”

“Like it was for my own good that Mom sent Juggie to jail for a crime he didn’t commit?” Betty fires back. “Neither of you have ever done anything for anyone other than yourselves!”

“You did what, Alice?!”

“Enough!”

Agent Smith’s tone is cool, commanding. FP and Alice both retreat.

“Your children are both in terrible danger,” says the agent frankly. “Now, you both bear responsibility for that, to some degree. If the younger Mr Jones hadn’t been arrested… well. Never mind. They’ve both agreed to cooperate with the FBI, to end the danger to their lives if possible.”

“I won’t allow it,” snaps Alice. “My Betty-”

“Your Betty doesn’t exist,” says Betty, unable to keep the nastiness out of her tone. “Jughead wouldn’t even be in danger if you hadn’t fucked with his life when he was a child.”

“If you don’t let them agree to this,” says Charles calmly, “it’s very likely that they will be in Witsec for the rest of their lives. Even then, with the magnitude of this situation, they’ll be far from safe.”

“If the boy’s willing to do this,” says FP heavily, “I don’t see that I can say no.”

Jughead looks at him sharply.

“I only ever wanted you safe, Jug,” says his father. “I wanted to do what’s best for you. I’m sorry I fucked it all up so badly.”

It’s the first time one of his parents have ever acknowledged anything like that. Jughead thinks he might cry. It would be humiliating, so he just gulps, and attempts a manly nod.

He isn’t very good at it.

“Betty,” Alice’s voice pleads. “Don’t do this. You and me can make a fresh start, somewhere away from all of this. We’ll be safe. I’ll let you do whatever you want, just-”

“No, Mom.” Betty’s voice doesn’t waver. “Dad’s family let a cycle of hatred and violence fester, and it ended with most of us dead. I won’t allow it to happen again. I want these people to be brought to justice, the way Dad and Clifford Blossom should have. You’ve spent years pretending that hiding the truth can give us a nice, safe way out of our problems. It’s just a fantasy, Mom.”

Alice sobs.

“I can’t change your mind? You’d risk your life for this boy?”

Betty nods.

“For him,” she says. “For Polly. For all the other people who’ve been denied justice by these people.”

Jughead gazes at her, and remembers that golden weekend when they’d found out the truth about one another. He can see her nails pricking her other hand, and, just as he did then, he brings her palms to his lips, and kisses them gently. He can see Alice watching them, rage and heartbreak fighting on her face.

His dad smiles sadly.

“Okay,” says Agent Smith. “We only have a few days to prepare. Let’s keep you two alive.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i managed not to write smut? it's so hard, no pun intended, after 4x19
> 
> why would i be so chill if it just turned into the betty and jughead murder hour again? those two play fun psychos, man


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> there are only a few days left to make the most of their time together, and betty and jughead can't even do that

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i make no claims that the fbi are behaving remotely legally in this situation, but if canon can ignore how ridiculous consulting betty would be, so can i

The odd thing about having a deadline on your life, Jughead reflects, is how you panic over what’s important.

There are many things he planned to do with his life, and now he might not get the chance. He’s really hoping he will, but he’s not blind to the fact the the FBI operation might fail; that he could die, or Betty could die, or they could both die. One night he wakes from a nightmare that she’d died in front of him, while he couldn’t move, and he went to prison for her death, left alone through a life sentence. Her lifeless body was still warm in his arms, and he knew it was nobody's fault but his.

He woke up crying, pleading. Bret definitely heard him this time, and wouldn’t stop mentioning her in the morning.

“Ponytail sure is a pretty thing, isn’t she, Forsythe?”

“It’s such a shame you two can’t sort out whatever it is between you, she looks like she’d be a treat.”

“What is it about her that you hate so much?”

He’s trying to provoke Jughead’s obsession. Now that Jughead knows their plans, he can see how he might have played into their hands, if he and Betty hadn’t managed to work their way through Alice’s lies.

So he encourages them. He stops ignoring Betty, starts crowding into her, teasing her openly. She always flushes, looking up at him with what he knows is affection, but the others think is confusion and fear. He starts to loom over her in their seminars, bickering with her about books and films and whatever they can think of. She pretends to be the same quiet Elizabeth that she started off as, but he can see that fire burning beneath the surface that promises that one day, they’ll debate this, and give as good as she gets.

He almost asked Agent Smith if he could get them condoms. He managed to persuade himself not to, although he defies anyone to say that it wasn’t a fair request, that Betty and he didn’t deserve to make the most of the time left to them.

It just would have been a bit too weird, even for them. There’s no way he would ask his dad or Mrs Cooper.

They met the FBI on Monday, and Mr Chipping returned with them the same evening. They are keeping up the pretence that it was a one day trip for the newspaper, and Donna, Joan and Bret seem convinced. So far, the plan is all in place.

On Wednesday, they get a special visit from their new newspaper advisor, who is an unrecognisable Agent Smith, complete with wig and moustache. He provides them with their wires, with earpieces so he can talk them through what to do. Joan has indeed hired a catering company for the party, and there are a few agents going in with the temporary staff. The FBI will be on standby the whole evening, ready to swing in to action and arrest the Quill and Skull as soon as they have enough evidence.

It’s their last opportunity to back out.

Betty knows she doesn’t want to, and a squeeze of his hand lets her know that Jughead agrees.

Agent Smith sighs.

“If it goes wrong,” he says, “you’ll need to go into Witsec as soon as possible, and it will be with your parents. I can’t see a way for you to stay together, if that happens. It’s possible that I’ll be able to reunite you once you’re adults, if you want that-”

“We want that,” says Betty instantly. “Jug?”

“Yes,” he says. “We can wait two years, if it means we can be together. I just want to clarify that I really don’t want to.”

Betty smiles sadly at that. She hates the idea of more years apart, after they’ve had so little time together. Maybe they’re clinging to each other because they’re going through so much, and by the time they get back together, they will have grown apart.

She looks at Jughead, remembers how they solved this, how close they’d become, and hopes that she won’t have to find out.

“I understand,” says Agent Smith. “It’s only two more days of waiting. Please, take care of yourselves.”

He leaves, and they are alone. 

It’s their last opportunity to be together before the party on Friday.

Jughead swoops in and kisses her hungrily, manipulating her chin until he can get at her neck.

“Betty,” he says, between sucking bites into her neck that teeter on the edge of pain, “Promise me you’ll be good, you’ll be careful.”

“I can’t – ugh, there, that feels good – I’ll be good, Jug, I won’t let them hurt me, I won’t let them hurt you!”

His hand is up her skirt, fingers inside her, and it feels so good. Betty grasps his arm, the hand that’s still on her neck, and grinds her hips against his touch. She can feel him pressing against her thigh, hard and eager.

She remembers a week or two ago, when she said they couldn’t fuck in the newspaper office the first time. She still thinks she’s right, but, god, she wishes she could be sure they’ll have time to try it one day.

“Jughead,” she says, both hands clutching the wrist that’s between her legs. “I love you.”

He pauses, and gazes into her eyes.

“I love you,” he says softly, and gives her a gentle kiss that is in direct contrast to the way he was devouring her a moment ago. “If you die you better haunt the fuck out of me, because I intend to do the same to you.”

Betty moans, as he crooks his fingers inside of her again.

“Please let me come,” she gasps. “Please, please.”

Jughead nips her under her jaw.

“Have you been good enough?” he hisses. “You think you’ve earned this?”

“I’ve been good!” Betty whimpers, as his hand speeds up, thumb on her clit. “Ju- Jughead!”

Her orgasm takes her by surprise, as she shakes on the desk. Jughead coaxes her through it, praising her gently.

She really likes that, dropping to her knees. He praises her through that too, hand wound in her hair again, shaking as she licks and sucks at him.

Newspaper hours accidentally last after curfew, but Betty thinks she can handle a detention if it gives her a few more hours with her boyfriend. They hold each other for a long time, caressing and cuddling until they can’t put their separation off any longer.

“I thought about the future sometimes,” Jughead admits. “I thought about getting into one of the best writing programmes in the country, maybe Columbia? Cornell? Really embrace my pretentious side, all the way.”

He presses a kiss against her head.

“I’m really embarrassed to say that you’re there too, now,” he says. “Maybe we get a shitty apartment together in New York, or even just live close enough that we’re only a few hours away. We can see each other all the time.”

“I could go to NYU,” says Betty. “Or we could both go to Emerson. It’s a nice dream, Jughead. Maybe we can have it.”

“Maybe,” says Jughead.

Friday dawns warm for autumn. Donna announces that the party will be in the woods. Betty lays out her outfit in the morning, the earpieces and wires always on her, always hidden. She knows Jughead has done the same.

By tonight, it will all be over, one way or another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> imagine bughead x files, but they're banging the whole time
> 
> magical
> 
> anyway we're heading for the end guys, can you feel it?


	19. thanks to you, it will be done

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the quill and skull's plans come to a head

The party is in the woods, all togas and laurels. The whole school seems to be there. Jughead thinks that the Quill and Skull couldn’t have thrown a more stereotypical party if they’d tried. Bret presides over it with a golden wreath on his head, like Bluto in _Animal House_ without the charming personality. Donna and Joan appear just afterwards, dragging a reluctant Betty. Jughead’s mouth waters slightly at the sight of Betty, wrapped in a bedsheet, and with little golden leaves poking out from under her loose hair. She shivers, and he remembers how cold she must be. How messed up it is to be lusting after his girlfriend when they’ve only dolled her up to leave a pretty corpse! 

And Bret made no such adjustments to Jughead’s outfit, so naturally it’s only Betty that has to be half-naked. Jughead remembers that as much as they want him dead, Betty is even less to the Quill and Skull; just an afterthought in their plans for him. It infuriates him. If Betty hadn't been here, if she hadn't helped him, he'd definitely die tonight. As it is, he's only _maybe_ going to die tonight.

There’s a golden solo cup in Betty’s hand, and Betty is taking nervous sips.

“ _Jughead,”_ says Agent Smith, over the earpiece hidden under the grey beanie. _“We’re concerned that they’ve drugged Betty’s drink. Can you find an excuse to stop her drinking it? And if at all possible, get a sample_.”

Jughead’s never been gladder to be pretentious. He’s kept a flask of his grandfather’s, always drinking from it at parties like these. It usually gives him an excuse to stick to non-alcoholic drinks, sitting in the corner with the battered metal flask.

He swaggers over to Betty, who looks at him with scared eyes. It’s mostly an act, though he knows that he and Betty are both terrified anyway; but they aren’t terrified of each other.

“What’s this, Elizabeth?” he mocks. “A good girl like you drinking? I don’t think so.”

He snatches the cup from her not-remotely reluctant hands, and pours it into his flask. Donna sends him a look of pure hatred, and he wonders if Smith was right.

“Oh, Jughead,” says Betty sadly, but her eyes flash gratitude at him. The cup seemed full, and he hopes that she had managed to find an excuse not to drink any at all.

Bret appears, slings an arm around Jughead’s shoulders.

“Forsythe!” he says excitedly. “Elizabeth! Just the people I was hoping to see! C’mere, I’ve got something to show you!”

Joan tries to catch Bret’s eye urgently, but Bret seems to ignore her, high on his own confidence. He wheels Jughead around, and the five of them head off into the woods.

To Betty’s mind, it all happens terribly quickly after that.

She wishes she were holding Jughead’s hand, and she tries to trip over as many things as possible as they make their way into the dark, towards the site where the Quill and Skull usually have their bonfires.

They reach the clearing in the woods, and Joan suddenly shoves Betty over. Betty lies still, pretends to be out of it. She watches it through half-closed lashes.

“What the hell, Joan?” demands Jughead, dropping to his knees alongside Betty. “What did you do to Cooper?”

Bret smirks, and points to Donna. 

The girl is holding a switchblade in her gloved hands.

“My switchblade,” says Jughead, for the benefit of the FBI listening. “I gave that in to the school as soon as I got to Stonewall. I haven’t seen it in a year. How did you get that?”

“Oh, the headmaster’s very cavalier towards his best students,” says Bret nastily. “He would never notice if one of us, say, took it from the confiscated property locker. Not when it’s not ours, and we’re not the ones who were involved with a gang as kids.”

“My parents’ gang,” spits Jughead. “Never mine.”

“Still,” says Joan. “It’s your knife.”

“It’ll be your fingerprints they find on it,” adds Donna.

“Her blood, and yours, mixed together,” says Bret. “How romantic. Her throat cut, and your wrists slit. Together in death.”

“Everyone knew she loved you.” Joan’s voice is pleased. “No-one will doubt that she went off into the woods with you, she was so desperate to get on your good side.”

“No-one will say they saw us with you,” says Donna. “They’re all drunk. No-one’s testimony will count but ours, when we say we were worried about you both, and went to find you.”

“And we found your bodies,” says Bret, “with her in your arms, like some terrible parody of love. Rohypnol in her bloodstream, signs of a struggle, before you killed her, then joined her in the sweet hereafter.”

“No-one would question your obsession, after how much we saw how you hated her.” Joan comes closer. She kicks Betty’s leg, and Betty has to fight to keep herself still. If this is all being recorded, they’ve won. This trio will go to prison, and bring the rest of the Quill and Skull down with them. “She sent you to prison, when you were children. It was poetic justice, but you couldn’t bear to live after you did it, in the heat of the moment.”

Jughead clutches Betty closer, and she can hear Agent Smith barking orders in her earpiece, promising that help is on its way. Donna is edging closer with the knife, and Betty’s scared that she and Jughead won’t be able to fight them off before the FBI gets here.

“Why are you doing this?” asks Jughead.

“It’s nothing personal,” says Bret, “although it’s pretty satisfying to do this, after you spent all that time ‘investigating’ us. Did you actually think you could find out the truth? You, a nobody who’s here on sufferance? You’re nothing to us. Less than nothing. Just a tool for us to prove ourselves, to take the place in life that we deserve.”

“I might write a book on it one day,” says Donna thoughtfully. “All dark obsessions and love and lust gone wrong. A true crime novel, like your beloved _In Cold Blood_ , Jughead. It’ll be the book you always wanted to write, but you’ll have a starring role you weren’t expecting. People will be obsessed with your murderous love.”

“And Jonathan?” Jughead won’t let a little thing like their imminent deaths stop him asking questions, and Betty has to conceal a smile.

“He was a weak link,” says Joan carelessly. “We had to shut him up before he made a mistake.”

“Enough questions.” Donna is clearly the one in control. “I suggest you don’t fight, Jughead. This is going to happen, no matter what you do. It will be less painful for her and you both if you just let it happen.”

Jughead’s arms tighten around her, and Betty comes awake, scrambling back desperately. Donna snarls, and the Quill and Skull trio leap forwards.

“Hands up!”

The clearing floods with light.

Armed agents swarm out from the trees. Bret tries to fight for a minute, and Joan seems too shocked to move. 

Donna drops the knife instantly. There is an odd resigned smile on her lips, and as Agent Smith advances towards her with handcuffs, she calmly extends her wrists.

Jughead’s hands are all over Betty, and he can’t seem to stop kissing her, stroking over the scratches on her bare limbs and grabbing at her.

“We did it!” he gasps, and kisses her, gentle and then fierce and gentle again. “Betty, we’re alive, they’re going to prison!”

“We did it,” she says, and fixes Donna with a look. Donna’s composure is shaken; she’d apparently never calculated that Betty might have her own part to play in this, her own autonomy in facing the Quill and Skull’s machinations.

Bret is raging, bleating that _it was all Jughead, they were just trying to stop him_! Joan, meanwhile, is trying to assert that she has diplomatic immunity.

“We have it all recorded,” says Agent Smith, not quite smirking. “We’ve got more than a few questions to ask you.”

It really is over.

Betty turns to Jughead, sees his wonderful, beautiful face lit with the kind of euphoria that she’s so rarely seen on him.

“We did it,” she whispers, caressing his jaw. He presses another kiss to her mouth, breathing her in like oxygen. “I love you, so much.”

“I love you,” he says. “Betty, god, I love you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yo i have no idea about the reliability or legality of what they use as evidence here, but then again neither do the writers, so, y'know
> 
> fuck it


	20. and all your dreams are still as new

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a fucking sappy epilogue, because the world is ending and apparently i'm a fucking sucker for domestic bughead

“So, what happened afterwards?”

The stage lights are almost blinding, although Jughead thinks he should be used to the heat and the discomfort by now. The host is a woman who manages to project a sense of friendliness while the cameras are rolling, although she’s cold and stern when she doesn’t have to keep up pretenses.

His book is in her beautifully manicured hands, dust jacket and pretentious cover displayed to a nationwide audience.

“Well, you’d have to read the book!” says Jughead, and the audience titters dutifully at the obvious joke. He’s given this talk, or at least a version of it, so many times now.

“No,” he says, “In all seriousness, the whole country kind of saw what happened next. It rolled on so long that you guys must have all been bored with it.”

“But not you.”

“No, not me.” He sighs, and remembers the years of proceedings, trying to construct a normal life as he became a key witness in one of the biggest scandals in American history. “And, I mean, it’s still kind of rolling on, isn’t it? You all must roll your eyes when you see that yet another old white dude’s been called in for questioning as part of the Quill and Skull business.”

This time, the audience’s laugh is much more genuine. He gets it; he’s become tired of the whole thing too. It’s part of the reason he decided to write the book.

“So, it’s kind of a change for you, isn’t it?” The host taps the cover. “Your last two books, A Change and The Last Gasp were both brilliant entries in the supernatural crime canon, both hitting the bestseller list.”

“Some people say they’re pulp,” says Jughead fondly, “But pulp is not an insult to me. When I was a kid, I thought I was going to write the next great American novel. But I think escapism can mean just as much, more to people even, than all of that.”

“So why the change?” she asks. “Why decide to tell this story now? And it’s an incredible story, Forsythe, really, and it’s your story.”

Jughead still grimaces at the sound of his real name. He should be used to it by now, after years of using it as his professional name; but for a long time, it was only the Stonewall kids who called him that.

“I didn’t want to base a career on that,” he says. “I lived this story, it’s true, and I’m proud to have helped to bring the Quill and Skull down; but one day, when I was first drafting this, I realised I wanted more. I wanted more than to let it define me, let my work as a writer revolve around that forever. So I sat down, and I started to write fiction, and it just… it clicked, you know? And my best and harshest critic thought so too, and it kind of… went from there.”

“That’s great, Forsythe,” the host says.

“But some of the cases, the prosecutions, they’re beginning to wind down,” Jughead says. “I’m beginning new things in my life, and it felt like the time. Plus I won’t get sued if I write it now!”

The audience laughs again.

“Well,” says the host, waving his book again. “ _The Stonewall Murders_ , by Forsythe Pendleton Jones, is out at the end of next week, and I for one cannot wait to read the story from one of the kids at the heart of this case.”

The interview is mercifully short, and Jughead leaves the stage without having given away his shaking hands.

“You’re still nervous.”

“Honestly, Betty,” he says, turning to his wife, “You go on national television and be cool. It’s your turn next.”

He wanted the book co-authored, but Betty had refused, saying that however much she helped, they were his words, his story.

It’s both of their stories.

Their baby gurgles in Betty’s arms. Betty had refused to bring Rose on stage with them, reasoning that their lives should remain as private as possible, in case any of the no-doubt many Quill and Skull people had revenge in mind.

“Hello, baby,” says Jughead, lifting their daughter out of Betty’s arms. “Are you being good for your mom? Are you being your sweet little self?”

Rose blows a spit bubble. She is a very calm baby, so young that she’s only just started supporting her own head. She’s all Betty, all big green eyes and cream skin, only Jughead’s dark hair and brows showing her resemblance to her father.

Their apartment is just big enough for two adults and their little baby, as well as a small orange cat. One day, Jughead thinks, he’d like to get a dog too, to play with their children, if they can get a place with a garden.

It might make up for the lack of grandparents or cousins, for the absence of any family except Betty and himself.

They see FP now and then, but the idea of taking their tiny daughter to visit him in prison is currently too frightening. Maybe, one day, when Rose is old enough to understand. It breaks Jughead’s own heart to see his father there, and he wonders what happened to the man who had once really tried to keep Gladys, Jughead and Jellybean afloat.

Alice is a different story. Betty had tried, she really had, but Alice had never apologised for lying, for sending Jughead to juvie, for nearly getting both of them killed. A year or so after the FBI operation, Betty visited Alice, one last time.

“I’m going to college in New York,” she said, showing Alice the acceptance letter. “So is Jughead. We’re going to live together.”

“I didn’t raise you like this,” snapped Alice. It was a favourite theme of hers. “Living with that boy you’ve been sleeping with-”

“That’s what you’re focussing on?” demanded Betty. “Not my offer? Not my future?”

Alice was silent.

“You need to accept this, Mom,” said Betty. “Jughead is a fact. Even if we broke up one day, he’ll always be important to me. I’m asking you, now, if you can get over this, because if you can’t, I don’t want you to be part of my life.”

“Because of a boy?!”

“Because of a million things!” Betty shouted, frustrated. “Because of the Adderall I didn’t need! Because you saw my hands bleeding, and ignored it! Because when the town thought I cut Dad’s breaks, you did too!”

They always ended up shouting.

“I want this,” said Betty. “This is my plan for the future. It’s not naïve, or stupid. We’ve been planning it for a year. You need to decide if you can cope, or I don’t want you around.”

Alice was silent.

Sometimes Betty gets a call from an unidentified number in the Riverdale area. She listens to the voicemails from Alice, and then deletes them. Sometimes she lets Jughead hear too.

Neither of their mothers ever ask for forgiveness. Gladys asks for money, now and then; but Jughead makes sure the money only goes to Jellybean, with whom he’s managed to rekindle a tentative friendship. It makes Betty miss Polly even more.

They are sort of famous. It’s weird.

Betty’s still on maternity leave, from her job as a criminal psychology lecturer. It’s exactly the kind of thing Jughead daydreamed about in their days at Stonewall, except they hadn’t usually brought down a secret society that penetrated the highest echelons of society. He’s going to be the stay-at-home writer dad after she goes back to work, and he can’t wait.

Rose is sleeping peacefully in her carrier, little arms up above her head.

“I thought we might try sex tonight,” says Betty suddenly, and he nearly drops his cup of coffee.

“Warn a guy, Betty,” he gasps, looking at her. 

“This is me warning you,” she says, sliding her hand across his chest. “I guess you got me all hot and bothered, looking so handsome in front of the millions of US TV viewers, and I feel ready. You don’t feel ready?”

“Oh!” he says, pulling her into his lap. “No, no, I definitely feel ready if you do.”

She presses a kiss to his lips, just like that first day at Stonewall, and he sinks into her kiss. It’s been a long eighteen years since Alice tore them apart, and they could have done without the whole nearly getting murdered thing, but this is fucking great.

Betty draws back, and gazes into his eyes. She’s struggled with pre-natal depression, with feeling like she’ll be just as inadequate a parent as her own. Jughead’s been there for her the whole time, trying his hardest to be supportive but not patronising, even as he copes with his own problems.

“So what’s the next book going to be about?” she asks. “Another novel?”

“Mmm,” says Jughead thoughtfully, leaning forwards to nip at her lips. “My hero’s very lonely. I thought maybe he needed a partner to investigate with him.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says. “A pretty Hitchcock blonde, who pretends to be quiet and shy, but underneath! God, what a pain in the bad guy’s ass!”

Betty giggles, and feels him grip her own ass.

“Does the hero like her?”

“You kidding? She saves his life, in every way he can imagine.”

He squeezes her tighter.

“She’s the only thing he ever really wants.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was fun
> 
> hope you guys thought it was fun

**Author's Note:**

> hopefully it's not too ooc. can't be any more ooc than canon.


End file.
